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Geist Squad crouched low in the overlapping branches of the marsh laurel, its spring blooms glowing a faint violet bioluminescence in the dim light of the forest. Giant mushrooms, some as tall as 50 feet with caps 140 feet in circumference or more, towered high overhead, blocking the noon suns. It was the middle of summer and Tenret's southern hemisphere was slowly cooking under the glare of the binary stars, and the cluster of tropical islands that lay off the eastern coast of Junmar was currently getting the brunt of the days' heat. Even in the relative cool of the Capmarsh Forest, the still air shimmered with the heat and was thick with glittering crane flies, pale gnats and luminous moths. Shadow swatted them away impatiently as they swarmed about her, trying to sink deeper in the razor leafed marsh reed that speared up from the soft ground around her to try and escape them. She was already hunched in a crouch, and sinking down any further would mean laying down, face first, in the stinking mud. She muttered in annoyance at the insects. Though she, like the other Legionnaires, were fully sealed up in their battle armour, the insects were still obscuring their vision. And the longer they sat in the marsh, the thicker the air became with the buzzing, spindly bodies.

The day was getting hotter and somewhere deeper in the marshy forest, Tyrant Squad was quietly circling the tear-away group of Jes'wan soldiers that had holed up in a naturally formed depression that had been eroded into the thick base of one of the tall mushrooms. The shroom in question was one of the tallest in the forest and had grown out of a large mound of earth that had formed a small island in the middle of a large, reed choked pond. The depression at its base was twenty feet deep and thirty-two feet in width, and it had made it difficult to get to the Jes'wans who were hunkered inside. Currently, it was up to Tyrant Squad to route them. Where ever Tristan had gone, Geist had no idea, but the squad channel was full of impatient banter as Geist Squad grew bored and frustrated. The heat, whilst not much bother to people like Shadow or Rep, was proving difficult for the rest of the Squad. Their smartweave body suits were stretched to their thermal control limits and wouldn't hold out for much longer. Soon, they'd have to switch to their battle armour's built in environmental systems to keep the temperature down to something more bearable. Shadow eyeballed her battle armour's HUD. She brought up the weather widget and sighed in remorse for the Furreds of the two squads. It was 40oC and the local temperature was set to climb all the way up to 50oC or more within the next two hours.

'If we don't kill those pricks first, the weather will.' Shadow commented to no one in particular.

'Don't fret, Shads. Their own battle armour is rated for eighty-degrees Celsius with a max of one-hundred. You'll get your kill.' Bonnie said.

'Shit, Chief, where's the El Tee with his mob? My balls are sweating up a storm over here.' Vin grumbled. He was sitting on his heels in the shade of a cluster of overhanging laurels, his rifle held loosely in the crook of his arm.

'Your balls are the least of my worries, Vinny.' Tristan's voice rumbled softly over the intra-squad comm. 'We're almost in position, Chief.'

'Roger that, Tyrant. We're waiting on your mark.' Bonnie replied.

'How's that signal coming along Corporal?' Shadow asked.

'Not great, Sarge. Every time I get a clear line, it fuzzes over again. I've only got a few more tricks left up my sleeve, I'm afraid.' The ant replied as he worked at his wrist mounted computer. It was built into his left bracer and a thin, black cable looped from his wrist and plugged into the side of his helmet. A trio of retractable antenna stuck up from a smooth bulge at the back of his left shoulder. The T'rayke was a walking comms suite and if he couldn't re-establish a connection with the Jinx, then they were stranded planetside on a secluded island until someone came looking for them. 'It's this damned forest. The shroom's caps are thick here. And I'm not just talking overlapping, either. They're helping the Jes'wans stifle our connection to the ship.' He shook his head, his smartweave clad antennae flexing and curling slightly in mild frustration as he worked.

'You got this,' Shadow patted him lightly on the shoulder and shuffled through the mud, water and reeds, over to Jax who was also hunched in a crouch, his thick, smartweave clad tail wrapped around his ankles. He was the squad's heavy weapons guy and favoured a portable beam weapon as opposed to the gatling gun Lance prefered or the standard issue heavy machine guns and rocket launchers on offer in the company's armoury. The fox was focussed on a point in the distance, his gaze pinned to the thick, creamy white trunk of the giant mushroom that pushed up from the centre of the wide, shallow pond of standing water. He was leaning against the trunk of another shroom, his portable beam weapon standing upright between his knees. The rest of Geist squad was spread out amongst the laurel, hiding in its shadows, taking advantage of the pale bioluminescence and tangling branches. If the Jes'wans could see them through the thick vegetation, then they had made no show of it. They had remained quiet since breaking off the last firefight they had been caught up in with the two squads of Legionnaires and retreated to try and better their defensive position which had them move deeper into the Capmarsh Forest much to everyone's annoyance.

'Just give me the word and I'll core that thing like an apple.' He said absently.

'Still waiting on Tyrant Squad to figure out their best position. Give it another minute.' She said, 'How you holding up?'

Jax canted his head slightly, a smartweave ear flicking a loitering crane fly away, 'Bored half to death, but my beam's ready to go.'

She moved methodically around the squad, staying low to avoid giving them all away, listening to their idle chatter on the comm. She moved silently, stepping lightly over a narrow brook of shimmering water to find Lemur and Thorn. They were both watching the same shroom that Jax and Vin were. She checked in with them and then moved on to her next squadmate, and the next, then the next, checking in on them until she circled back to Bonnie. The armoured horse looked down at Shadow from her perch on a fallen shroom log. Moss and small, bright fungi clamoured across the thick stem that was half submerged in mud and water, and marsh laurel had seeded along its fibrous length at some point, taking root and growing upwards and outwards in a great flourish of green and violet.

'How you holding up Chief?' Shadow asked quietly. Even though their suits were soundproof, it still felt necessary to speak in hushed tones and so they did, lest their chatter give away their positions.

'I just caved. My AC's just kicked in and it is bliss.' She purred with conviction.

Shadow chuckled, 'Squad's settled in but bored and Rep's still struggling with the signal.'

Bonnie swore softly. They had lost contact with the Jinx four hours prior to running the Jes'wans to ground. The deeper into the forest they had gone, the weaker the signal had become. Rep was doing everything he could to get back into contact with their ship but so far, the chances of regaining orbital comms within the next hour was looking slim.

'How you holding up?' Bonnie asked.

Shadow shrugged, 'Same as everyone else minus the impending heat stroke.' She replied. 'One of the many perks of being a dragon.' She flashed a grin. Even hidden in the confines of the full-face armour plated helmet, Bonnie knew the grin was there. It was in the tone of Shadow's voice and her body language, subtle though it was.

'Tyrant to Geist, we're in position.' Tristan announced.

Bonnie looked back to the large shroom, 'Copy that Tyrant. The kids are getting bored, so hurry it up.'

Tristan began a count down from fifteen seconds and everyone tensed, ready for action. The moment he reached zero, a pair of smoke grenades thudded into the marshy reeds that clumped wildly about the base of the targeted mushroom. The water bubbled where they had landed and twin plumes of thick smoke erupted, blanketing the area around the giant shroom. The insects were driven away and the Jes'wan's were rendered almost blind, lindering in the still air. There were forty of them, outnumbering the Legionnaires nearly two to one. Shadow tensed, her muscles coiling as she prepared to spring into the air, her grip on her rifle tightening and her eyes scanning the squad's TacNet. Everyone had come alive, being brought out of their bored idling by the smoke.

'Cut it down, Jax.' Bonnie ordered flatly.

Somewhere off to her left, Jax shouldered his beam weapon, lined it up and thumbed the firing stud. The one metre length weapon - a metallic tube with ceramic fins that was connected to a battery pack that he wore like a rucksack, hummed quietly. The capacitors clicked and Jax twitched under the recoil. He leaned a few degrees into it and slowly swept the trunk of the shroom, giving the beam weapon its full ten seconds. The air shimmered around Jax as the high output laser ate through the tough fibres of the shroom, leaving a smouldering line that flickered and hissed with flame. There was a loud creak as the shroom slowly canted backwards, building in pitch as gravity took a firm hold of the giant fungus. It splashed down in the marsh, breaking up the thick canopy as it fell, raining organic debris all around. A plume of bright green spores choked the air in its wake like a thick fog, poisonous to all who breathed it.

'Everyone on their suits' air?' Bonnie demanded as her suit's vents slammed shut in response. Her own suit's readings were telling her that everyone was, but even the best technology could bug and lie. Everyone immediately confirmed that they were sealed up and breathing their suit's air and a spark of relief flickered through her.

'They're trying to make a break for it again.' Shadow grunted.

Bonnie gave the final order to attack and Shadow leapt into the air, the powerful beating of her wings sending the spores whirling around her. Once twenty feet off the ground, she sighted down her rifle, her suit cycling automatically through its multiple visual spectrums to pick out the Jes'wan soldiers that were spreading out in groups to better their defense. She found one hiding behind a stump that was just large enough to conceal him. He was up to his waist in water and he was scanning around with his rifle for targets. Shadow pulled the trigger and the crack of the hard round echoed through the forest. The Jes'wan's armoured head snapped back from the impact, his arms flailing madly as he sought to retain some balance. A second bullet reduced his head to a bloody stump, thick blood pumping out of torn arteries and turning the water crimson as the corpse slumped.

'Got one. Two shots to the head.' She reported.

'They got their best armour on then.' Bonnie commented as she opened fire.

Shadow saw another Jes'wan drop in a shower of armour fragments and blood, a sizeable hole just beneath his cuirass plate. The Jes'wan's armour was tough, but it wasn't tough enough to fully stifle the kinetic impacts of the kind of hard rounds being fired at them. The hollow point bullets they had opted for were dealing extra damage, beating the Jes'wan's armour to death on the first hit, then putting a head-sized hole in the wearer. The Legionnaire's objective had been to put the men down and bring back evidence in whatever form they could, so that's what they were doing. The platoon were from a light cruiser, part of a task force that had gone rogue after being denied shore leave four times in a row after six years of picket duty on the Dark Fringes, watching over a new colony as it seeded itself. The commodore in charge had simply gotten bored and lost his patience with his C.O's constant denials of some kind of break for his crews, said 'fuck it' and took his ships and any willing crew with him back into the more populated areas of the galactic arm. The six ship strong task force had spent the last two years pirating anything they could and the casualties, both military and civillian had quickly sky-rocketed. The commodore and his task force had caused almost two-billion Credits' worth of damage in such a short amount of time, that the medianets had had a great time with sensationalising the Jes'wan commodore's underhanded activities, making their own fortunes off his antics. He had managed to successfully elude capture since starting out, taking his task force back into the slipstream the moment they pillaged the corpses of their kills, making it incredibly difficult to keep up with them. Until now.

Four of the task force, including the commodore's ship, had been registered as destroyed, any surviving personnel captured and tried for treason and dereliction of duty. Among the numbers of the captured personnel, was the commodore himself. The fifth ship had been chased into Tenglaar held territory by an Undervilde warband three days ago and the sixth had dropped off a platoon of soldiers on Tenret for reasons unknown. Where their ship had got to, they didn't know, but that was Captain D'armeus's problem, not theirs. Right now, their problem was shooting at them and tossing grenades, mud, water and flora erupting in ragged geysers of destruction around them.

Shadow circled overhead, pointing out targets over the intra squad comm, tagging them on the TacNet and taking shots at them. Tyrant Squad had moved in silently, trapping the rogue soldiers between them and Geist Squad. And with Shadow circling overhead, raining bullets down on their heads and pointing them out, they found themselves well and truly pinned with nowhere to go and no one to turn to. There was a roar of a gatling gun and a pair of Jes'wans erupted in a cloud of torn meat and shrapnel. Lance swung his gatling gun away and mowed down another. He roared some curses and stomped deeper into the fight, Giggles and Smalls hot on his heels, their own guns barking.

They were heading toward the depression that the Jes'wans had been holed up in, but stopped short. Lance cocked his head and dropped into a crouch, the honey badger and velociraptor following suit. Shadow glided lower, her gun trained on the hidey-hole, finger touching the trigger ever-so-slightly.

'I think there're four still inside the hole.' Smalls said.

The velociraptor was empathic, but when it came to the Jes'wan race, he struggled somewhat. They were difficult to read as they were partially psy-immune. Shadow peered into the hole to clarify his report, her gun trained on where she guessed they were crouching. The depression was surprisingly dark, even with the shroom gone. She switched to her darksight and saw them immediately.

'Confirmed, Smalls. There's four more inside-' She started. She was cut off by a hail of bullets. She returned fire, managing to injure one and kill another, 'Three and a half-' She growled angrily, twisting in the air to save herself from being shot to pieces.

Bullets tore through the smartweave clad leather of her wings, creating more holes and tears. Another bullet spanged off her right shoulder and she lost her balance, tilting hard in the air with a strained curse. She flared her wings, flicked her tail rigid and swung her hips forward in a desperate bid to arrest her momentum. She had almost managed to twist around to bail out when stars erupted in her vision and her ears started ringing, her head snapping back. Pain slammed into her skull and a sharp jab of agony speared down her right horn into her head. The pain in her horn only lasted a few seconds; there were no nerves there, the pain simply came from the root where the horn grew out of the skull, but it felt like an eternity and was enough to make her black out for a few seconds.

She toppled from the sky, going limp and landed with a thudding splash in the marsh below, the Jes'wans cheering and jeering at her. She came to with a strong hand gripping the back of her gorget. Cuddles was dragging her through the muddy water to safety even as she fired into the group of soldiers that had downed Shadow, sending them silent and back into hiding.

'And you managed to keep a hold of your gun. Impressive, Sarge. Real impressive. How you feeling?' The carnotaurus asked. She pressed the tip of her rifle through the tightly clustered branches of the marsh laurel they were hiding in and let off a short burst.

'Like I've just been shot.' Shadow muttered sourly as she rolled over.

Her wings stung, her back hurt and a cruel headache that throbbed slowly deep in her brain was pounding merrily away. She checked her weapons. Her knives were still inside their sheaths, her blaster was still strapped in its holster and her grenades were undamaged. Her rifle, though... she swore in annoyance. Mud had been collected in the grooves of the breech. She cracked it open under the covering fire of Cuddles and hastily scraped it clean with an armoured claw. She snapped the rifle back together again, checked it was loading properly and rolled to her knees.

She pressed into the laurel and helped Cuddles lay down some suppressing fire as Lance moved in for the kill. The rails of her rifle were still coated in a thin layer of marsh slime, but it didn't seem to be affecting the weapon's performance. The removal of a Jes'wan hand confirmed that. The soldier went down howling, gripping the mangled stump of his wrist as blood spurted from the wrecked limb. His cries were soon silenced by another slash of Jax's beam weapon. Three more Jes'wans had been eradicated, half vaped by the laser. What was left of them burned with acrid ferocity at the edges of the depression. Things went quiet for a few minutes. The fight had only lasted ten minutes thus far, but from what Shadow could remember, those first ten minutes had been furious. The giant stalks of the mushrooms surrounding them leaked a pale fluid from numerous bullet holes. Others were scored deeply with cauterized gashes from Jax's beam weapon. Shadow wondered if she was concussed. She really couldn't remember much of the last ten minutes and her vision seemed a little fuzzy.

'Think they're gonna surrender?' Oz said quietly.

'Nah. They're just regrouping like we are.' Vin said. 'They won't let 'emselves get caught alive. Their courts'll kill them anyway for being turncoats. Might as well die in a fight than get lined up for a sideshow back home.'

'They're on the move again.' Giggles said in annoyance.

A hail of large cap fragments from the downed shrooms rained on the retreating Jes'wans heads, beating them down into the water with enough force that the shroom fragments exploded. The Jes'wans who had been struck went down hard and stayed down, laying sprawled in the pools of standing water and mud.

'No they're not.' Tristan said.

'Damn, dude. I keep forgetting you're telekinetic.' Oz said.

'So do I.' The T. rex replied lightly.

'There's another group shuffling away through the reeds to our south-east.' Shadow said, looking around blearily. She squinted into the spore-thick air and tagged them on the TacNet.

'I got 'em.' Jax said. He moved swiftly forward through the marsh and the clamouring laurel, dropped to a knee and thumbed the firing stud.

In less than ten seconds, the retreating Jes'wans died in the glare of the laser. Their ashes drifted in the standing water. Jax shouldered his beam weapon, locking it into place in its sling and brought his rifle up, checking there was a round chambered.

'Got one more shot of laser left, Chief. I'd rather save it, just in case if you don't mind.' The fox said.

'Understood, Jax. But I think we got them all.' Bonnie said. 'How you doing Rep?'

'Almost there, Chief. Cutting down some shrooms really helped the signal.' The T'rayke said. He'd been sitting behind a small shroom, in a thicket of young marsh laurel and weed briar some distance away from the skirmish with Derron watching out for him. He sounded almost disappointed to have missed out on the activity, brief though it was. 'I have a connection! General comms, direct to the Jinx. Now patching you back in, Chief.'

'Jinx, this is Major Coltan, do you copy?' She said as she motioned for the two squads to start picking through the dead to check that they had got them all.

'We copy you, Major. We thought we'd lost you for a moment there. Is everything okay?' It was Consal. The Engarren sounded infinitely relieved to hear from them.

'Just had some minor interference from the shrooms down here.' She said. She looked around at the gathered Legionnaires, 'We got one injured, but mobile.'

'Medi-evac required?'

'Negative on that one Jinx. It's only Sergeant Ironclaw. She's fine if a little concussed and pissed off.'

Shadow made a rude gesture at Bonnie then continued picking through the debris. So far, not a single Jes'wan had survived. The kill zone had been so compact that it took five minutes to account for all forty soldiers. Bonnie reported as much to the Jinx before signing off.

'Okay, brats, get your shit together! We're leaving in ten minutes! Jinx came up against a hostile while we were messing around down here, so our taxi service might be running a little late.' Bonnie announced.

'What kind of hostile?' Tristan asked.

'The Jes'wan kind. This lot's light cruiser tried starting some shit with the Boss and he erased them from the universe in response.' She replied.

They gathered up the tags of the dead soldiers where they could - Jax's beam weapon had melted a few tags to nothing, but the ones that were still intact were more than enough to put together a list of names for the dead platoon. The weapons they recovered from the dead Jes'wans were old. As far as Shadow was concerned, the age of their offensive equipment had been in favour of the Legionnaires. If they had been packing something more modern, then that Jes'wan soldier would have easily removed Shadow's head and not just half a horn. She reached up and gingerly touched it. It was jagged, still tender, but it would grow back in time. She muttered a stream of curses regardless. It would take ages to grow back fully and a lot of filing would have to be done as it re-grew or it would come in crooked in comparison to her other horn. She sighed and scooped up the gear she had collected from the dead and made her way back over to Bonnie. First Admiral J'tarlen of the Jes'wan Royal Black Navy would need all the evidence he could get to press charges against the remaining survivors of the rogue task force that were currently still being hunted down. Assuming the Tenglaari Black Navy left anything for Jes'wa to collect.

They regrouped and Derron and Spike went around everyone, checking them over for any underlying injuries or the like. Domey had a strained muscle in his neck from headbutting a Jes'wan soldier to death that had tried cornering him, Thorn had a twisted ankle where she had misjudged the depth of a hole and Shadow got a half-hearted reprimand for low flying from the black jaguar as he administered some mild pain killers for her headache. Her injuries weren't enough to warrant the use of his magic, so he stuck with the more basic medical methods of inserting a small vial filled with a misty white liquid into her suit's medical slot. Her headache immediately started to ease off, much to her relief. She flexed her wings experimentally. Some of the holes and tears in her wings would heal over, but not all. It was starting to get a little difficult to get airborne and soon she would have to bite the bullet and get the re-growth therapy that JD and her son, Shade, had been pushing her to consider for months now. She pushed that thought aside for now and ordered her suit to start compiling the data of the day's combat into a BR ready for download. The re-growth therapy could wait until later, when she had a chance to sit down and do some serious research on how it worked and what it entailed.

As one, both squads stopped their chatter and looked skyward. There was a faint keening roar of engines and a pair of matte black attack shuttles appeared as dots in the bright noon sky. Without the giant mushroom, a hole in the canopy had been torn open. Spores still filled the air, but the majority were now settling on the ground in the still air, forming a thick scum on the water and gathering in powdery drifts across the ground. It was like walking through a fresh covering of sickly green snow, each step making an oddly satisfying crunching sound as they moved.

'All right, folks, back to the landing area for pickup. There's nothing else to do here.' Bonnie said.

She led them back through the forest, taking the same route that had led them here. Tristan brought up the rear and they moved onwards in silence, making their way back to the shore of the island. The shuttles swept in, spinning mid-air to present their tails to the two squads, the ramps dropping and landing in the white sand with soft thuds. Geist and Tyrant Squad wordlessly piled into their shuttles, relieved to be heading back to the Jinx, a successful mission tucked firmly under their belts.

Shadow tentatively touched her broken horn and swore again as the shuttle burned hard for orbit.