Sean-Michael Argo - Ghost Faction

Poe laughed quietly behind his skull face, and though Jada couldn’t see him clearly, she had learned after weeks of rigorous one-on-one training how to read his body language. The mag-armor was bulky and did much to render each merc somewhat indistinguishable from the other, but there was a certain bounce in his shoulders that gave him away.

The Dire Swords did not indulge in the kind of soldier’s banter that Jada was used to. These mercs were beyond conscription or servitude and the sort of gallows humor such circumstances instigated. Still, it seemed that Womack had chosen well in pairing Jada with Poe, as their personalities and fighting techniques complemented each other. If she could find something to laugh about, considering the ghosts and nightmares she was burdened to carry, then damned if at least one of the mercs could too, so Poe would do.

Poe fired up the engine of the vehicle, which was a lightly armored, all-terrain vehicle that had been retro-fitted with a variety of racks for stowing weapons and equipment, including a mounted light machine gun on the passenger side.

Jada had always been a crack shot, and she was eager to try her hand at mobile gunnery in the field, despite her high marks in shipboard simulations.

Jada slotted her helmet over her head, briefly recalling the sensation of having her long, dark hair shorn off during her initial induction into Reaper basic training. It was the first step in a long and grueling evolutionary path towards what she had now become. Jada clasped the seals shut and flexed her fingers inside her armored gloves. Not everyone was born into being a wargir from Errol or a royal stormtrooper of Grotto Corporation, and she had come a long way from the sulphur stacks of Baen 6.

The ATV kicked up gravel and frozen ash as Poe steered the vehicle away from the ledge and across the rock face towards the objective. Long-range sweeps had given Womack enough data to plot a general angle of approach for the ATVs through a series of canyons. They were to identify and eliminate the assorted defense batteries and infantry patrols that surrounded the objective. Once that was complete, the dropships for which the Dire Swords were famous, would surge into the perimeter and vomit forth a legion of deadly warriors.

Unlike larger mercenary companies, such as the Folken, who maintained well-rounded forces capable of functioning as independent and private armies, the Dire Swords were specialists at what they called ‘blitzkrieg,’ or lightning war. They were an assault team and came loaded with anti-armor capabilities that allowed them to cause incredible amounts of damage in seconds.

Jada squeezed the grip of the mounted gun and steadied her breathing as the excitement of the pending combat threatened to overwhelm her. Ever since Vorhold, there was emptiness in her, a suffocating void that threatened to swallow her whole, and the only thing that seemed to keep it at bay was the rush of battle.

Jada knew that such a relationship with traumatic past events was rather common amongst veterans of war and she was no different. There were a great many veterans throughout the universe who found that they did not want to put the rifle down, and even when they did, there were few places for them in the civilian world. However, unlike many others, Jada Sek had earned the duty coins to qualify for a place within the Merchants Militant, and like those before her, she had kept hold of her rifle, now selling her gift for violence on the open market to the highest bidder. From now on, her private war with the universe was exceptionally well-paid and exquisitely equipped, though she, like the rest of the mercs of the Dire Swords, would have happily fought with sticks and stones for free.

Poe piloted the ATV off of the low rock formation and swooped down into a canyon that seemed as if it had been worn away by millions of years of water flow. The canyon floor was smooth, as were the walls, and to Jada’s eyes, it was truly a marvel. Even now, after so many years and so many adventures, the simple wonder of raw nature, even so ruined as it was here, amazed her. After a life lived in squalid hab blocks, the belly of a Reaper tug, and in the deadly confines of hostile salvage ops, she found the wide-open spaces of the tomb-worlds and dead worlds to be liberating. It occurred to her that she was at her most fearsome in this moment, transformed by the serum, armed to the teeth, and riding into battle alongside warriors equally as grim and terrifying as she was. If there was life after death, or at least the spectre of resurrection, then perhaps she had found it.

“This is the first time I’ve been planetside across the Ellisian Line, other than the tomb-worlds,” said Poe into the comm-bead as the ATV sped across the bottom of the canyon to be joined by two other vehicles bearing Ranec and other mercs. “I haven’t got any tech ratings or geologic credentials, but nothing about these canyons seems right.”

“Too many side passages and on multiple elevations,” observed Strega, one of the other mercs, as she pulled her ATV alongside Poe’s vehicle. “No tool marks from what I can see, but my money is on intentional design none the less, this place was built.”

“Eyes on!” shouted Berg, who piloted the lead ATV, with Ranec in the gunnery seat. “I’ve got hits on the tracker. No heat signatures, no motion pings, but sonar has them painted.”

“Sentry droids maybe?” asked Jada as she racked the slide of her mounted gun and thumbed the target finder to bring up the bright red crosshairs that would flash green if she happened to point her weapon at anyone wearing a pre-keyed friendly tag, which each of the mercs had bolted to the backs of their helmets.

“They’d have to be advanced tech to move fluidly enough to baffle the motion tracker and be hydro-cooled to mask the heat,” answered Poe as he began looking around the canyon, observing the various side passages cut into the rock on their level and above them. “That’d be some expensive hardware for a bunch of gunslingers and a start-up corporation.”

“Poe, Strega, hang back, I’m almost on top of them,” came Berg’s voice over the comm-bead as the lead ATV sped up to attack speed and disappeared around a tight bend in the canyon, “I’m committed. Let’s see what’s out here with us.”

“I’m seeing the same thing they are and there’s just nothing here,” said Strega, her voice noticeably exasperated as she and Poe slowed their vehicles to thirty percent speed, “I’m getting hits all around us, like we’re passing right through them.”

Just as Strega finished speaking, Jada felt a cold sensation wash across her body. It was unlikely that any cold from the outside would penetrate the mag-armor, much less the insulated bodyglove to which it was attached.

Their suits were advanced indeed, and a Dire Sword could function as a self-contained fighting unit for days at a time, pulling water and nutrients from small containers on their backs even as their waste materials were recycled within the suit. She had found the armor similar to her salvage marine kit, though far beyond her Grotto tech in terms of efficiency and effectiveness, not to mention sheer cost.

Buying into the Dire Swords had taken every scrap of wealth she had, and the young woman had found that she couldn’t have cared less. Money wasn’t important to her anymore and perhaps hadn’t been since she’d emerged from that dark pit alone in the world.

“Did you just feel that?” asked Mors, the gunner on Strega’s ATV, as he began to sweep his weapon back and forth across the canyon.

“I don’t see anything, but the scanner says I’m driving through a forest of hits,” said Strega as she visibly shuddered, as did Poe and Jada once more as they passed through more cold spots.