THE BUG EATERS

Faina and Tulio had been working for Airam for a couple of weeks. Things had moved quickly and there were now a lot of people wrapped up in their operations, from Airam’s extensive network of friends in Lamplight to a number of hired mercenaries with relatively classy records. Some of those mercenaries were with them today, as they prepared to attack a Forward Operating Base for the DNA.

This was an aggressive move, they knew, striking against an entire base full of professional soldiers. Still, the base was small, and they had prepared carefully. Faina felt no guilt about it either. These soldiers had been harassing and killing scavengers in Smoke Desert for some time, making it dangerous to venture too close. By taking out the base, they could make the desert safer.

The FOB was composed of several tents inside a chainlink fence with hastily constructed watchtowers at each of the four corners. The plan was to attack through the east side of the base because they knew that its vehicles were all parked on the west side. With luck, they could quickly scare all of the soldiers in that direction and then just keep up a menacing presence and watch them drive away.

One of the watchtowers spotted them before they were very close to the base and a siren began to sound. It wailed far and horribly. It didn't matter. They had expected this.

The mech, piloted once again by Rayli, had been repaired to the best of Lamplight’s ability, renamed ‘The Liberator’, and painted in its entirety with a bright yellow color. It wasn’t effective camouflage, quite the opposite, but it was striking and unique, especially as the orange sun hung low in the sky. It was also covered with jagged iron spikes that, while again not exactly practical, gave it a powerful aggressive edge. The message was that the scavengers of Lamplight weren’t just hiding away anymore, they were ready to make their mark.

She put it into a running stance and it sped ahead of the two trucks that were carrying Faina and the others. It fired its refitted heavy machine gun at the watchtowers as it ran. Bullets tore through the structures, which collapsed instantly, sending their sentries tumbling down to the earth. When The Liberator reached the base, it stomped a section of the chainlink fence flat against the ground to create an opening. They were in.

Faina thought back to how the mech had seemed when she first saw it. Her pulse had hammered. It had been terrifying, and it was still terrifying. The difference was only that now this monster was on their side and fighting their battles.

As the trucks caught up, Faina watched soldiers emerge from the tents wearing gray-blue fatigues and helmets. The ones with rifles were already taking cover, but some were carrying MVMs and RPGs. They attempted to fire on the mech as quickly as they could, hoping to disable its weapons before it could deal any more damage to their base. Rayli activated Phantom Soul in response, and a wall of hardlight blocked the projectiles. They exploded violently against the wall without so much as scratching The Liberator.

Faina dismounted her truck alongside Tulio, Airam, and a couple of others. The heat of the sun bit into her skin. Mercenaries were dismounting from the other vehicle. They were highly trained and heavily armored, but Faina wasn’t sure they would even be needed.

Rayli switched Phantom Soul from ‘WALL’ to a ‘SLICE’ pattern that struck out at a parked APC. This was a newly written routine, untested in the battlefield, but made possible by the mech’s power core. It worked better than Faina could have imagined. The APC was cut cleanly into two separate parts.

As she crossed the collapsed section of fence, raising her SVD and scanning for hostiles, she could see that most of the other side were already panicking. Some were already making a break for their trucks with the mercenaries happily firing at their behinds. Faina ignored them and spotted an actual threat. She pointed it out to Tulio and Airam with a couple of hand signals.

A number of the soldiers who had fired rockets into Phantom Soul’s hardlight wall had been brave and smart enough to rearm and try again in a flanking pincer maneuver. They were planning to aim at The Liberator’s sides and catch it unaware. Rayli was still focused on threats that might be in front of her, leaving her vulnerable.

Airam ran for the three soldiers on the right with both his BLAST-250s drawn. He punched large, gaping holes into two of them with well-placed shots to their chests. Faina shot the third one through his eye and winced as he clutched his face and fell to the sand.

Tulio had gone for the two on the left. He shot two bullets into the first, one in the chest and one in the head, and then dove to the ground as he realized the other was about to launch an MVM at him. It went over his head and exploded against a section of chainlink, low enough to spray sand and rocks in the air. Tulio pulled out his pistol and fired five times at the panicked soldier. All five shots connected and he slumped to the ground.

Fighting stopped for a second and the three of them were about to let their guards slip when one of the mercs was abruptly torn apart by a machine gun volley from one of the tents. Grenades flew out towards The Liberator and several soldiers swarmed out during the chaos created by the booming explosions.

Rayli, Airam, and the mercenaries all opened fire in the direction of the tents, but it was Tulio who reacted best. While everyone else was spraying and hoping for the best, he carefully spotted and picked off his targets. Faina noticed that he was smiling.

It unnerved her. She knew that he was good with a gun, but she had never imagined him actually taking pleasure in the fighting. It wasn’t audible over the gunfire, but for a second it even looked as though he was laughing. Worse yet, some small part of her could understand it.

The base’s gates were open and trucks full of retreating soldiers were on their way out. The Liberator lurched after them to hurry them away. The grenades had been too weak to do any significant damage even without Phantom Soul’s wall in between the explosions and the vehicle. Mech hulls were too tough for such mundane weaponry.

One final DNA soldier jumped up from where he had been lying prone, assumed to be out of action, and lunged for Tulio in a mad, desperate maneuver that took everybody by surprise. Most likely, he was trying to take Tulio hostage. Faina aimed her rifle but couldn’t get a clear shot. The soldier’s gambit was that nobody would shoot at him for risk of hitting Tulio by mistake.

Instead, Tulio dropped his rifle, then twisted the soldier’s arm to throw him hard against the ground. He dropped to his knees and began punching the man in the face with all of his viciousness. He hit him until he was unconscious and then hit him a few more times for good measure, leaving him bruised and bloody. There were splotches of red all over the sand.

As Faina approached, Tulio was reaching for his pistol, but he stopped once she was standing next to him. She picked up his rifle and helped him to his feet. He brushed the dust off his clothes, wordlessly.

“Good shooting, everyone,” Airam said. “It’s time to load up all their guns and equipment into the trucks. We want to pick this base clean and get out of here before they have any time to retaliate.”

Tulio had adapted well to being infantry, and Airam had adapted well to being a leader. His voice was loud and clear for everyone present and they all began stripping their fallen enemies of their guns, helmets, and utility belts.

“Hell yeah!” said Rayli, her voice distorted by mech’s speakers. “We wiped an entire base, no sweat! We can really do anything!”

“Rayli, you left The Liberator exposed for a second there. You’ve gotta be careful,” Airam scolded.

Faina entered one of the tents and looked around. Rays of light shone through the holes they had put in the fabric and there was a soldier lying on the ground with a gaping injury in her leg. She had no weapon or helmet and was desperately applying pressure to her wound. She looked frightened for her life.

“Please, I surrender. I didn’t even pick up a gun! I had no time to react!” she pleaded.

“One soldier in here, injured and unarmed,” Faina shouted.

“Alright! Just keep an eye on them. Anything else in there?” Airam replied.

There was a table with a radio and some documents. Faina grabbed what looked like a recent map of the DNA-KA frontline and shoved it into a utility pocket. There were also chairs, some bottles of water, and a stack of large plastic crates. They were olive green and numbered but were otherwise unmarked.

“What’s in those?” she asked the injured soldier, gesturing to the crates.

“Ammo tins. There’s a lot of them. They were only meant to be here temporarily before being transferred to the other bases.”

“There’s ammo here! We’ll need multiple people to carry it!” Faina shouted again.

“Alright, we’re coming,” Airam said.

He entered with one of the mercenaries, gave the injured soldier a glance, and then checked that the crates were indeed full of ammunition. He and the mercenaries then made several trips in and out of the tent, carrying the heavy crates one at a time and in pairs.

“Why don’t we just shoot the last of the soldiers? They’re making me nervous,” said one of the mercenaries, just loud enough for Faina to overhear.

“We could,” said Airam, “but we have to pay attention to our reputation now that we’re drawing attention to ourselves. If we never leave survivors, never show mercy, we’ll be even more hated by the other factions than we already are. We don’t need to make the target on our backs any bigger.”

“If you say so.”

Once all the crates and equipment were loaded onto the trucks, the surviving soldiers were roughly dragged to the edge of the camp, where they’d be out of the way, and left there while Rayli flattened every tent and every stretch of fence using The Liberator. It would make it much harder for the DNA to reestablish the base, and it was also a clear warning against doing so. This area was in Lamplight’s sphere of influence now.

Faina climbed back into the truck. With the ammo crates, it felt more cramped and uncomfortable than it had on the drive over, but she was relieved the mission was done with. She felt herself starting to return to a resting heart rate.

“Ready to leave?” yelled Kravitz from the cabin of the truck.

“We’re ready,” Airam said. “Let’s get home.”