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From the Skies, into Darkness

The dark, low-bodied transport made almost no noise as it cut deftly through the cold night air. It was a LIT-32, a small aircraft designed primarily for infiltration work. Its engines routed all of the exhaust into a small filtered space in the belly of the craft, which was then vented out into the air. Thus, the only sound it made through as it circled around a large, rocky crag was the noise the wind made cutting over its small stability wings.

Inside the craft, four figures sat strapped into a cramped transport hold, going over their equipment one last time before the operation. A dull red light filled the space, casting them in bloody, almost demonic shadows.

No matter how many times he'd seen it - and he'd certainly seen it enough in his career - Captain Chris Kandros hated that light. That light had signaled any number of successful missions, but he couldn't think of that; all he could think of when he saw that gloomy red glow was the missions that had gone wrong.

It put him in mind of the operation where he'd lost his leg, and the other things that had gone wrong...

He forced that out of his mind, checking the action of his carbine, turning on the visor of his helmet with the press of a switch, and then he put it on. Immediately, the world was instead lit up in a pale blue, the night vision already kicking in. He cycled through the icons on the right side of his sight as the helmet linked to his cranial implants.

He saw the status symbols for the rest of his team, the small map that displayed his immediate location and those of registered enemies and friendlies, and a small ammo counter that lit up in the lower right hand side of his vision as he picked his rifle up again, the weapon linking into the wrist of his battlesuit. The two intricate systems meshed, and he would be warned of any jams and ammo count, and anything else that might be occurring with his primary.

With his other hand, he did the same checks with his sidearm, racking the slide and checking to make sure he had a round chambered. Once he was satisfied that all of his weapons were in working order, he holstered his pistol and allowed his carbine to rest across his knees as he looked over at his teammates.

Lieutenant Volker Logas was double, triple, and quadruple-checking his weapon systems, as was his usual habit. The dragon was a giant, easily the tallest and broadest member of Raider Team One. His battlesuit and helmet were reinforced, indicating his role as heavy weapons specialist. Currently, he was almost religiously checking the functions of his own sidearm, a hefty large-calibre piece, custom built from the shell of an older weapon used by someone in his family some time ago.

He'd told Kandros the story before, but it always slipped his mind. After he put the pistol back into its holster, he leaned forward, allowing his primary to make itself known. His backpack unfolded, the heavy machinegun-cum-grenade launcher smoothly slinging forward over his left shoulder, the barrel flicking between different points. He was making sure that the twinned weapon was correctly linked up to his own implants.

The other officer noticed his commander's attention and looked up, and Kandros didn't need to know the older drake was wearing a hard, killer's grin. The wolf briefly flinched back and shook his head, a faint smile crossing his own features. The dragon had close to thirty years on him, and he still could never quite get over the joy the older man had for killing the enemy.

"Bit queasy there, Butler?" The drake asked, leaning forward in his seat as he reached back, not needing to look at the complex servo mechanisms of the machine gun's rotating joint to tweak them to his liking. "Pretty sure they've got pills for that back at the base."

Butler. That was his nickname among the spec ops Raider Teams; Hell's Butler. Everyone got a nickname, and while originally he'd been teased when the grimy, spiteful sergeant major unofficially "in charge" of the nicknames had given him that, but he'd proven its efficacy time and time again. Nobody mocked it anymore.

"No." He responded curtly. The dragon was always ribbing him; it was all in good fun, to Logas's eyes anyway, but it got on the reserved captain's nerves sometimes. "Just thinking of the mission ahead. Staying focused."

For once, his subordinate didn't come back with some snappy reply, and just nodded and returned to tending to his weapons, leaving the wolf to continue his survey of the team's preparations.

Ice was next. Even he had trouble thinking of the snow leopardess by anything other than her given nickname. Yusova Eldmir. Noble daughter of the Ksieltski family. Apparently all of her nobility tended to mean she thought of herself as above everyone else. She was busy making sure everything was in her medical kit - antibacterial sprays, quick-sealing gel bandages, along with everything else to patch up minor wounds right there in the field.

She noticed his attention and looked up, her eyes unreadable through her tinted visor, and then simply closed her kit up and placed it back on her hip. Her own sidearm matched his own, the ALP-12 model, though it lacked the personal modifications that his own weapon had.

He knew that she wasn't trying to act like she was better than anyone else; he had never told her, but he'd been made aware of her grievances when she'd been transferred to his unit. Very few people actively chose to join one of the dangerous Raider Teams; it was hard, thankless work, cracking the nuts that normal units couldn't handle, and it came with a veil of secrecy so that no matter what heroic feats you might perform, you could never tell anyone about it unless the military approved it.

And the military did not like its secrets getting out there.

He was getting distracted again, and he shook his head, annoyed with himself. He turned his attention to the last member of his team, the only one besides himself who was there voluntarily, and this one still had the shine of it all being new.

Aiden "Fingers" Alexander sat in his seat, the suppressed submachine gun leaning against the inside of his knee as he played with one of the half dozen knives he kept secreted about his body, the knives that gave him his nickname. The cheetah was lean and slender, his helmet still slung on his belt. He wouldn't put it on until ordered, as the captain well knew - he was a very willful creature, and he would pull the helmet off again as soon as he possibly could.

When he felt his commander's attention, the feline looked up, sending Kandros a wide, boyish grin. He was fresh out of training, having been selected early on in his basic combat camp experience to be passed onto Raider Selection as soon as he finished that. Now he was considered a full-fledged Raider Team member, even though he had very little combat experience of his own.

Kandros wasn't sure what to think of the oh-so-very young marksman. He was incredibly gung-ho in the manner of young men throughout the ages, but he was an excellent soldier as well. Training or no training, you didn't get into the Raider Teams if you weren't an excellent soldier. So instead he simply gave the cheetah a brisk nod, and turned back to his own final preparations.

A low buzzing rang in his helmet, telling him that they were almost to the drop zone. In ragged unison, the team stood up, checking the actions of their jetpack parachutes. Small wings sprang from the edges, the duel engines warming up as the drop ramp at the end of the transport bay began to open.

Cold, blue-tinted moonlight spilled in, as bright as the noonday sun to their dully glowing visors. He could see the rolling sand dunes below them, with lightly scattered oases and clumps of hardy plant life struggling to remain alive in the harsh desert. The odd rocky crag punctured the landscape, sticking up from the sand like the broken teeth of the planet.

The red light of the bay turned off, and the buzzing ceased all at once, and the wolf stepped towards the edge of the ramp and let his body fall into the slipstream. As he left the transport, spiraling into the blue-lit desert so far below, numbers appeared in the upper right of his vision.

Wind speed, temperature, and altitude were all calculated on the fly; literally, in his case. he could also see that the other members of his team had followed his lead. He hadn't expected anything different, but it was gratifying to know in the moment that all of his systems were operating the way they were supposed to.

At about two hundred metres above the ground, he activated the retrograde thrusters and pulled up sharply. He hovered less than fifty metres above the sand now, and he gently settled down in a puff of dust, followed shortly by the other Raiders.

Once they were all on the ground and safe, they helped disengage each others packs, lowering them gingerly to the ground and then concealing them under a thermal camouflage cover.

"Raider Team, comms check." Kandros said curtly as he unslung his rifle and turned the safety off. He linked the smart sight to his visor and quickly scanned the immediate area, looking for any signs that their insertion had been detected.

It was all quiet, nobody around - exactly why they had chosen this area as the landing zone. Once he was reasonably sure they weren't in immediate peril, he snapped his hand flat, palm down, ordering his other teammates to the cardinal points to provide three hundred and sixty degree security. All of this happened in mere seconds, before the first response to his low, radio-borne communication came back.

"Meatgrinder, reporting," came Logas's voice, the grizzled drake sounding as eager as ever to get stuck into the fray. The second in command's icon lit up on his radar map, marking his position.

"Ice, reporting." His third responded curtly, her voice as clipped and crisp as it ever was. As she spoke, the Raider 3 icon sparked into existence on the radar.

"Fingers, reporting. Let's get going, chief!" And finally, the cheetah, sounding more excited than Volker even, but for entirely different reasons. His Raider 4 icon made its presence known alongside the others, and thus completed the quartet.

"Butler, all reports confirmed. OBJ is four kilometres north, over that big ridgeline. Let's move up and get eyes on the target." With that, he stood from his ready crouch and began to lope across the cold sands, weapon held at the low position across his chest.

The ridgeline in question was a natural monument, at least a kilometre high, formed of brown stone and standing proudly above the crags and dunes. It was carved into odd, irregular shapes by wind erosion, and he knew from scans of the area that it was riddled with natural tunnels and caves.

"One hell of a walk. Couldn't we have landed in a town and scared up some transport?" Alexander complained as they set out, his SMG hugged tight against his chest. He had to forcibly slow himself to not outpace the rest of the team; as the designated scout-sniper, he carried lighter equipment, and his beloved sniper rifle was disassembled and stored in a sealed case on his back.

Before Kandros could answer, his second in command snorted over the channel. The immense dragon's heavy machinegun clicked and clattered as it swiveled this way and that, following his gaze as he scanned the horizon for lights or contacts.

"Good idea, kid. No better way to start a stealth operation than by immediately announcing our presence to the local, hostile civilian population, and then riding in on a stolen vehicle like something straight out of the vids." Logas's sarcasm was strong and biting, and not for the first time Kandros wished the drake had a bit more tact.

"At ease that shit, keep the net clear." The commander interrupted before it could escalate any further. "Keep your eyes peeled for enemy patrols, I don't want to hear anything that isn't related to the mission."

He waited for one of them to come back to that, ready to unleash hell on them if they tried, but apparently his tone and the seriousness of their assignment had cowed them for now. He nodded and brought his rifle up to his shoulder as his visor picked up motion. It was just native fauna however, a small desert creature scurrying for shelter from the four soldiers moving through its domain.

Eventually the ground began to slope upwards as they approached those mighty crags, and the team weaved in and out of the cover of the boulders and rocks, covering each other as they moved. They were sure that if any sentries had been posted they would've already been seen on their approach - it was too open to have stayed hidden in the dunes. Still, it didn't pay to take chances and give their enemies an easy shot, even if he was sure they hadn't bothered to post lookouts on the ridge. This was some backwater outpost on an out-of-the-way world, so the chances that they kept security tight - no matter their intentions - was incredibly low.

No alarms were raised as they scaled the brown stone of the cliffs and made their way to the very top of the ridge, their bodies low and snaking. No sentries after all, or at least none that were alerted to their presence. When they finally crested the ridge, they did so carefully - Ice remained behind, covering their rear for any patrols that attempted to come up on them, while Logas guarded the flanks simultaneously with his constantly scanning heavy weapons.

Together with Alexander, Kandros slithered to the edge of the stony plateau they found themselves upon, the latter producing a pair of thermal imaging binoculars from a protected case on his hip, the other taking the case of his precious rifle off of his back and beginning the assembly process.

Less than a minute later, the pair looked down upon a sprawling, disorganised compound set in the middle of a natural hollow in the earth. It was a military complex, going by the high security wall, the electrical deterrence fence, and the guard towers with bored-looking soldiers manning them every twenty feet or so along the wall. The insides, however, looked like a corporate facility, filled with office buildings and large, simply designed warehouses, with only a comparative handful of military barracks and other recognisable structures.

"I estimate about one hundred and fifty soldiers in the compound, max." Alexander said from beside him, studying the defenses through the whirring optics of his sniper rifle. As he did this, he began reaching up and carefully adjusting the many small knobs and dials along the side of the scope. "Unless they have those warehouses and hangars and stuff converted to house soldiers, there's not room for more than a company, tops." The young cheetah said confidently.

"That's about what I was thinking." Kandros agreed as he panned his binoculars this way and that, eyes narrowing. "I count three foot patrols, as well as a mounted patrol in a scout car on the road to the objective." When those numbers were also confirmed by his sniper, the captain nodded briskly and slid back to the rest of his team.

"Alright, you heard what we're up against. Hundred and fifty men, Royal Regulars. Probably just conscripts in a place like this, but you never can tell, they might just be on rotation. Don't fuck this up, we go in quietly, check the hangars for the objective, and get the hell out without being noticed. Only go in loud if we absolutely need to; you'll know when that happens."

He didn't need to lay this all out; everyone other than Fingers was an experienced special forces soldier, but at the same time, he needed to explain this. He didn't want a repeat of Holger III. "Alright? Let's get going then, keep your eyes and ears open for the patrols."

They both nodded, not bothering to question his leadership. They might complain about his decisions later, but for now they were content to follow his orders and see where it led them. All three of them slipped over the other side of the ridgeline, working their way down and using the scrub, rocks, and sand to conceal themselves from any particularly watchful eyes.

It was almost too easy - Kandros knew that there was no such thing as "too easy", but this came close. The watchmen in the towers were bored and fidgety, and paid no actual mind to their surroundings, while the patrols were ragged and slow, easily avoided by the skilled operatives as they finally worked their way under the deterrence fence and scaled the security wall behind.

As was his wont, the commander went first, boosting himself up with the help of Volker and landing silently on the other side - his specially designed boots muffled the sound of impacting with quick-made concrete, and his advanced synthetic shin absorbed the shock even better than the remaining flesh one. He was up and moving within a second, his carbine rising to his shoulder as he scanned the surroundings for potentially alerted security forces.

He took cover as Ice landed next and moved up next to him, scanning in the opposite direction as the huge dragon hoisted himself up over the wall and landed, just as gracefully despite his muscular bulk. The heavy weapon trooper's machinegun had folded back into his pack to avoid showing its distinct silhouette, and he instead had drawn out a short-barreled rifle that looked almost comically undersized clutched in one of his meaty hands.

Moving silently and covering each other, the trio slid from building to building, listening constantly for patrols or alerts from Alexander, still sitting on the cliffs above on overwatch. They were in the part of the compound that housed the office buildings, and the hangars that they needed to search were several hundred metres away.

Supposedly, the enemy had a new secret weapon housed here - some new battle tank, or a new model of walker, maybe a new EMP delivery device. The intel they had was sketchy at best, which is why Raider Team One had been sent in to investigate and confirm. Kandros believed firmly that it was all just smoke and mirrors, and even if there was something here, it wouldn't amount to much - that was how all of the other "superweapons" used by both sides in the conflict had ended up time and time again.

No, like all wars, it was one of flesh and blood. The gadgets got more and more advanced, making the flesh and blood pay more for their wars, but technology wasn't the be-all, end-all of combat. You had to have a talent for killing to succeed here, or just enough luck to beat the devil at cards in his own casino.

The wolf took a quick peek around a corner to see a bored-looking guard standing at the gate into the next part of the complex. He pulled his head back, signaling to the others what he had seen, and then he waited for the sound of the guard's feet shuffling. He made his move, coming around the corner crouched, springing forward in long, loping strides.

The soldier had turned away from the corner where the special forces were hiding, craning his neck back to look at the sky so far above. He never heard Kandros coming up behind him, and though he tried to let out a startled squawk of surprise as the hand clamped over his mouth, it ended up in a muffled gurgle as the long, slender vibrating blade punctured his throat and trachea. The wolf withdrew it and slid it effortlessly up into the back of the man's skull, severing his spinal column and then plunging it deep into his brain.

His eyes widened behind the square-framed Royal Regular-issued goggles, but he was already dead, blood spilling out and staining his slate-grey uniform as he fell limply into the waiting Kandros's arms. The wolf dragged him back into cover, wiping his blade grimly on the dead soldier's clothes and unslinging his carbine once again.

The three of them pounded out across the pavement through the open gate, taking cover just inside the next area of the complex and studying the inside of the storage district. They were inside of a large, open yard surrounded by hangars and warehouses. The yard was filled with dozens and dozens of large green cargo containers, stacked on top of each other and forming a confusing maze that only a trained quartermaster could pretend to know their way through.

Seeing an opportunity to stay clear of prying eyes, Kandros and his team slid into the shadows of the cargo boxes, sliding silently through the twists and turns of the complex structure. He settled down against the edge of one, getting ready to peek out around the next corner, when a loud, echoing shot froze him in his tracks.

Judging by the distance of the noise, he could already tell that it was Alexander; why had he opened fire? What had he seen? Why hadn't he contacted the rest of the team to let them know what was going on?

No sooner than he'd had these thoughts, the lower left corner of his visor expanded into a small box, displaying the camera feed from the cheetah left on the ridgeline. He was running, his sniper rifle slapping loudly against his armoured hip.

"It's a trap, captain, get the hell out of there!" Alexander bellowed through the mic, turning around and firing his sidearm left-handed. This gave his commander a view at what he was facing - half a dozen men in desert camouflage shawls and tight-fitting armoured suits were pursuing his sniper, taking cover behind rocks and shrubs when those wild pistol shots came their way.

Kandros was wondering how the hell they hadn't spotted the enemy sentries when he saw one of them drop down into a cunningly concealed entrance that had been bored down into the natural caves below, then covered with sand and made to look normal again.

He cursed his own ineptitude, his own arrogance at not bothering to check the ridgeline for such an obvious ploy. The enemy had made their security look lax in order to make them settle down and move in, leaving his sniper in such a vulnerable but irresistible location.

Instead of doing what they expended, Alexander elected to charge his opposition. He ran forward, ducking and weaving, his incredible agility and grace making it hard for their submachine guns to draw a bead on him. His own pistol barked two, three times, and a pair of the attackers slumped back, neat holes drilled into their heads.

Then an unlucky shot tore the sidearm from the feline's grip, sending it skittering over the edge of the plateau to bounce and tumble down the rocks below. Not fazed by this inconvenience, the cheetah brought his shoulder in and charged the last few feet towards the remaining three enemy soldiers.

His right arm was covered in an advanced exoskeleton that effectively tripled his strength, allowing him to absorb the recoil of his heavy sniper rifle without any undue harm or unnecessary muzzle rise. However, he proved that the strength could be used for other tactics, as his first punch slammed into the closest desert-shawled warrior's cheek, his helmet cracking from the impact and his neck breaking audibly. He went cartwheeling backwards, dead before he hit the ground.

Alexander swooped low under the clumsy swipe of an enemy sabre, his own vibrating blade clutched in one hand as he jammed it through the light armour of the trooper's stomach and forced it upwards. He gutted the soldier like a passionless butcher, ignoring his screams as he kicked the man off of his knife and turned to face the last of his opponents.

The soldier had dropped down into one of the concealed holes again, leaving the grinning, panting cheetah alone on the ridge as he turned to continue down the slope, planning on meeting with his team and heading for the extraction point.

The sand in front of him burst, a massive form rising from the concealed tunnel entrance. He couldn't see it through the dust cloud its appearance had kicked up, but he threw the best haymaker he'd ever pulled off, aiming for the enemy's belly, hoping to double the figure open and stab them when they were down.

That punch, the best he'd ever thrown, would turn out to be the last as well. He gasped in pain as a black-clad hand snapped out of the dust cloud, catching his own and stopping the punch before it could connect with its target. The hand closed effortlessly, and his hand was crushed in that grip, the exoskeleton shattering as easily as the fragile bones and armour plating. He was released and fell backwards, landing on his ass and gasping in agony as he looked down at his absolutely mangled trigger hand.

He was hyperventilating from the pain, but he struggled to force himself to feet, holding the vibrating blade in his off hand. The weapon fell from his hands as the enemy emerged from the dust cloud, and he realised that he probably wasn't getting off of this planet alive.

The last thing Kandros saw before his sniper's helmet cam shut off was the hood-shrouded, grinning skull mask of one of the Radmir Revenants, and the wolf's blood ran cold. The Revenants were killers, nothing else but - they weren't soldiers, they were butchers, and he realised that if Alexander wasn't already dead, he would be soon... or he wished he was.

The others had just seen the same thing that their commander had, and he could feel their shock at the turn of events even through their body language. But they had to get moving - if thi was a trap, they had to get out of here.

But it was too late. The cargo containers they'd taken cover amongst burst open and he stumbled back as the space around them was suddenly filled with grey-camouflaged Royal Regulars, all aiming their weapons at the shocked trio. He saw that the insides of the crates were lined with blocking material, that had prevented their visors and thermal scans from picking up anything but inert materials within them. The trap had been impeccably planned, and sprung without a hint of error.

A tall, graceful brown-furred wolf wearing the crimson greatcoat of one of the Guard Infantry stepped into view, a pair of charge swords belted at his hips, along with a pair of elegantly decorated machine pistols. He took his hat off and bowed, a cold smile on his face as he looked at his new hostages.

"Ah, the famous Raider Team... you know, I had expected better out of such exceptionally trained soldiers." The Guard, bearing the rank markings of a major, said slyly, shaking his head in mock disappointment as he motioned for his soldiers to come forward, intending to take them all prisoner.

He had underestimated them. His very words told Kandros that - the dismissiveness said he no longer considered the three soldiers before him a threat, even if they were still armed. He might've been forgiven for doing so; nearly thirty trained soldiers had them at gunpoint, surrounded from all sides.

But this was Raider Team One for a reason. They hadn't come this far to be outplayed by a scumbag Guard commander and his underlings. Nothing needed to be said; nothing could be said.

Kandros's first shot took the other wolf high in the chest, sending him tumbling to the floor with an almost comedic look of shock on his face. His next shot punctured the goggles of the soldier next to the Guard, bursting the back of his head open and spraying his brains all over the container he'd been hiding in. The captain was already moving, dropping to one knee and beginning to roll to the side, still firing select shots that put another three of the enemy combatants down before they could even react to the opening of hostilities.

His subordinates hardly needed any signal other than that. Ice dropped to one knee, her sidearm barking out a staccato retort as multiple three-round bursts punched through the chests, throats, and heads of the soldiers closest to her, each trigger pull a surgical execution. An empty magazine clattered to the ground, a fresh one slamming home as she surged for the opening she'd created out of the encroaching circle, seeking better cover.

The Royal Regulars had just begun to panic and open fire when Logas's heavy machinegun emerged from his pack with an audible, menacing clatter. A couple of stray, hastily fired rounds spanked off of his thick armour plating, ricocheting off into the maze of cargo containers, but it was too late for anything so puny to stop him. The racket that the weapon made when it opened up was deafening, even with the sensory protection that the Raiders' helmets gave them, and it worked back and forth among the ranks, rotating around the drake's head as he put paid to their attempts at cohesion.

If the noise was intimidating, the effects were simply devastating. Royal Regulars were light infantry, and the heavy calibre rounds punched through their flak jackets without so much as a pause, sometimes penetrating through into another soldier. Chests burst open in showers of gore under the sustained fire, limbs were blown off, heads reduced to crimson mist, and as the last shell clattered to the ground, barely audible above the now screaming alarms, only the last few fatally wounded soldiers remained, sobbing out their final breaths among their dead comrades.

"Move. We're moving, now." Kandros said, his voice ragged with exertion and grief for his lost sniper. His hand snapped out, motioning them to the flanks as he took the centre, moving up between the now empty cargo containers, checking each corner. They soon came out into the open, checking all around them for the enemies they expected to find.

Surprisingly, they hadn't been surrounded by any more than had ambushed them in the first place; the captain almost laughed in hysteric relief. They'd been so confident in their trap that they hadn't bothered to task anyone else with capturing them. The three operators pounded across the courtyard, heading for the nearest wall.

By now, sirens were blaring as the sound of gunfire and the lack of communication about their prisoners finally sank into the commander of the post. Since the jig was already up, Kandros gave up on subtlety; he motioned for Volker to move up, pointing at the security wall. The big drake nodded, his heavy weapon giving a low thunk as a grenade loaded into the automatic secondary launcher.

The explosion was terrific, even with the built-in environmental dampeners built into the captain's helmet, but he ignored that, charging through the newly created gap in the exterior wall. The grenade had also taken care of the nearest deterrence post as well, and so they were free to scramble up the slope, ignoring the hasty, unaimed shots peppering the ground near them as they hurried away.

"What about Fingers?" Eldmir barked at him as they stumbled up the nearest dune, breaking direct line of sight from the enemy soldiers still hurrying out of the base in pursuit. She turned around, looking across the small valley to the other ridge, where their sniper had been. The snow leopardess's body language conveyed her incredible concern for the final member of the team.

"If he's not dead already, he's wishing it about now." Kandros responded, his voice a strained snarl. He'd taken a shot in the lower right back on the mad dash out of the base; it hadn't pierced his battlesuit, but the bruise would last for weeks if he managed to get out of here.

He really wished he hadn't tacked that last part of the sentence, but it was too late, the thought was already here to stay.

"That was a Revenant, Ice, you know what those things do." He heard the defeat in his own voice, but he couldn't help it. Rolktov Revenants were killers, plain and simple. If the rumours were true, and he believed them, you had to be an identical twin, and kill your twin to join their ranks. Their armour was decorated with the bone of their kin, giving them the Reaper-like appearance that was their namesake.

Having one here was a very bad thing. They had to get the hell out of here as soon as possible; Raider Teams were the enemy's boogeymen, the things that kept them up sweating at night. Revenants were the Raider Teams' boogeymen.

Ice knew that as well as he did, of course, but she had an attachment to the young feline, and he could tell it took all of her incredible self control to not disobey his orders and rush to save the other team member, suicide mission or not. Thankfully, her loyalty to the chain of command won out, and she only sent one last, reluctant look over her shoulder as she joined the others.

By now, whatever commander presided over the base seemed to have recovered his wits and remembered that he had patrol vehicles roaming the road. One of them was roaring up towards them, skidding along the dunes effortlessly, already turning its turret-mounted heavy machinegun in their direction. Battlesuits or no, that high calibre weapon would tear them apart in open ground, so Kandros dove behind the closest boulder he could find.

Before he could so much as peek up over it however, he heard the thumping roar of Logas's grenade launcher behind him. Explosions burst all around the suddenly wildly zig-zagging staff car, until one grenade burst right under the left front tire, sending it spinning and then flipping up over a rock that they hit, crashing down in a mangled heap of metal and groaning crew.

"Good hit, Grinder." The wolf said as he stumbled to his feet, ignoring the pain in his lower back as he took up the retreat again. He grimaced beneath his mask, checking the action of his carbine to make sure no dust had gotten into the action when he'd dived for cover. They'd taken out the car, but it had cost them precious seconds to do so, buying time for the double-timing infantry to crest the dune behind them.

Shots began whipping around them again, and he saw Ice go down under a direct hit to her helmet, but she shakily rose up immediately afterwards and began laying down fire with her sidearm as she scrambled into cover.

Seeing no other choice, Kandros also ducked back into cover, bracing his weapon against the rock as he began to fire. Short, sharp cracks were added to the steadier, deeper bark of the enemy battle rifles, and he watched grey-clad figures tumble back or stumble and fall, crimson staining the dull, ashy sand. In his blue-tinted gaze, it was all the same colour, but he was all too familiar with how blood stained everything, and just briefly his stomach did a slow lurch, no matter how experienced he was in this business.

The heavy machinegun mounted on Logas's back started up its clattering roar again, and it reaped a gruesome toll among the group of charging, inexperienced Royal troops. Kandros saw at least one unlucky fellow struck three times in the chest and then once in the jaw, and the mangled body that fell to the ground barely looked like it had been a person, split open so horribly. Another fell to the ground, clutching a leg that had been neatly blown off at the knee, the missing limb still standing upright, the boot sitting neatly atop the sand.

Eventually, between the horrific casualties and the sheer weight of fire put up by their prey, the Regulars were forced to retreat back over the crest, a few brave souls dragging their wounded to safety, but most just leaving them to suffer and bleed.

The Raiders weren't interested in sticking around and finishing off the wounded, however; another patrol car was rumbling towards them, and heavy rounds chewed up the sand around them in puffs of ashy dust, and the trio scrambled for the crest of the next dune, stumbling out of sight. They'd taken minor hits in that brief engagement, but most of the regulars hadn't been aiming when they'd opened up, and only slight scratches and ricochets were to be found, nothing that had to be treated immediately.

They'd crested the second dune and were huffing softly on the other side, the exertion of such a panicked run and multiple quick engagements catching up with them at last. They didn't have the luxury of time to sit around and recover, however, so as soon as they could catch their breath they were off again, up over the next ridge, where they found a terrible scene awaiting their presence.

Nearly twenty light infantry in their signature death masks were kneeling in the sand, their crimson fatigues and grey armour looking odd in the blue world that Kandros saw. They were aiming at the crest of the ridge where the trio of exhausted soldiers stumbled up into view.

The wolf slumped a little, tracking their movements - they had no give in them, no hesitation. If he made one wrong move, they would open fire. But that wasn't even the worst sight, despite the fact that it spelled almost certain death for him and most likely for the teammates behind him.

Aiden Alexander was on his knees in the centre of that formation, head slumped down between his shoulders. His right arm was clearly mangled within the confines of the shattered exoskeleton, and his helmet had been discarded. He also had the telltale bloodstains of other wounds staining his uniform, ragged holes punched in the hard fiber-metal of his battlesuit.

As the trio entered the killzone, the cheetah raised his head, grinning weakly, blood dripping from the corner of his mouth. He spat out something uncomfortably gristly into the sand, ignoring the score of enemy soldiers around him, and the lurking reaper behind him.

"Took you bastards long enough to get here." He said with a raspy laugh that ended in a coughing fit, spitting out another wad of bloody matter onto the ground between his knees. "I was beginning to think you'd gotten lost."

Still a sense of humour, even in the face of death. That was Fingers to a tee. As he spoke, the Revenant stepped from its shroud behind him. That long black cloak folded back, and the spectre revealed itself in full. The figure had to be as tall as Volker Logas, and the dragon did not have a small frame. It was slender, androgynous, armoured in all black with bones worked into the framing of its plates, finished off by the long muzzle of a skull making its faceplate.

Two black lenses stared out from the eye sockets as a long scythe slid down in its grip, both hands taking their place on its dark metal shaft. A voice rumbled out from the voicebox mounted to its throat, devoid of all emotion.

"You should not have come here, Raiders."

Alexander managed one last laugh as he heard that, raising his mangled arm. He spoke his final words then.

"Guess I'm no good for the fingers game now, am I? I never could manage a knife in my left hand." He started to laugh again, weakly, though he clearly knew what was about to happen.

The scythe whipped across, almost too far for the eye to see, a crackling crescent of energy parting his neck without so much as a pause. His head bounced to the ground, his last weak grin still on its face as his body slowly toppled to the ground behind it, spilling crimson arterial blood at the Revenant's feet.

Kandros was almost beside himself with horror. He had known the kid was as good as dead when he'd encountered a Revenant, but seeing the poor sniper so brutally, so casually executed right in front of him was so... violating. So personal.

It wouldn't, it couldn't stand. The young male had given his final words as a reminder as the light infantry moved in on them to finish the job. If he raised his weapon, they would gun him down without mercy, though they'd prefer to capture him, try to turn him.

He wasn't about to be captured and tortured and eventually killed or turned against his fellows. So he did the absolute last thing the infantry closing in on him expected; he followed Fingers' final advice. He dropped his carbine to the sand and surged forward, bodily bringing the closest infantryman down. The knife that he kept concealed in a spring-loaded compartment on his left wrist came out, jabbing up and under that skull-faced gas mask that the trooper wore, slicing cleanly through his throat.

He used the gurgling, dying soldier as a body shield from the horrified comrades, and then threw it at the next in line, following after it with a brutal tackle that ended with a knife through the ribs, exploiting the gaps in the light body armour. By then his primary vibration knife was in his hand and he plunged it through the trooper's visor, burying it through their eye and into the sand beneath. He lunged aside, abandoning his wrist knife in favour of smoothly drawing his sidearm instead.

A brief flick of his thumb set it to the automatic fire mode, and he worked two short bursts across three of the remaining soldiers, putting them down with wounds to their chest or head. He felt a heavy impact in his upper arm, and icons popped up on his visor, warning of low integrity. He ignored them and charged the next one in line, who was already scrambling for cover.

His remaining team members weren't idle while this was going on; no sooner had he charged then Logas opened up with the machinegun on his shoulder. That familiar, deadly roar filled Kandros's ears as he wrestled desperately with his latest target, only for the enemy soldier to suddenly go limp as half of his head ceased to exist, a stray round having reduced that part to pulp.

Ice had dived for cover behind the crest, and she tossed a fragmentation grenade she had snatched from the heavy trooper's belt. The dull thud-crack of its explosion was muffled by several nearby light infantrymen, and now less than half of the enemy squad was left on their feet. The Revenant was nowhere to be seen, and, realising they were outgunned here, the remaining soldiers fell back as best they could.

They lost several of their remaining soldiers to the unrelenting machinegun, but the last handful was able to escape the reversed trap. Once they were out of sight, Kandros, now covered in blood - some of it his own, some of it the enemies' - stumbled over and retrieved his rifle from the sand, cleaning it off as best he could in a hurry.

He began to limp in the direction of the extraction zone, only now noticing that a wild shot from somewhere had pierced his remaining flesh shin. It was hard to walk, but he pushed through it, wincing but growling the agony away and ignoring Eldmir's attempts to stop him to treat it.

"We don't have time, Ice." He snapped when she tried insisting on it, only to be in turn stopped by an upraised hand and a scowl he could feel even through their visors. For the strangest moment he felt like he was back in school under the watchful eyes of his teachers, and he stumbled to a halt. The rumble of the enemy patrol car was far off now, but he kept a wary eye out regardless as the snow leopardess knelt down, disinfecting the wound and bandaging it.

"Alright, that's as good as we're gonna get out here." Ice said grudgingly as she straightened up, drawing her handgun and checking the ammo as she did so. She replaced the magazine quickly and the trio started trudging off. Logas was tweaking with the heavy weapon slung over his shoulder - he'd been putting it through a lot more stress than he had expected to for this operation, and he wanted to make sure it was in top condition for when they ran into contact again.

That next contact didn't take long at all. Several more squads of infantry crested the ridge behind them, this time supported and protected by a pair of rust-bucket APCs, unarmed but still capable of providing them mobile cover. By the time they rolled up over the hill, chugging and sputtering as their ill-maintained engines strained, Kandros and the remaining members of his team had taken cover on a small hillock, with plenty of boulders at the top to use as cover.

"Grinder, AP, left one!" Kandros barked over the comms, popping up in time to snap a few hastily aimed shots at the encroaching enemy soldiers, more just to force them to keep their heads down than to kill any, though he did see at least one topple with a strangled cry.

"Roger." Logas's voice came back, deep and gravely, as he switched the ammunition type in his grenade machinegun, taking a moment to feed the correct belt into the chamber. Then, when he was ready, he nodded to his commander. They rose as one, the captain providing covering fire while the massive dragon lined up the shot with his launcher, and another thud-crack from the grenade launcher.

The AP grenade had a depleted uranium tip and a two-part detonator situated behind it. The rear of the round was essentially a miniature jet engine, which activated as soon as it left the barrel, accelerating it to an incredible speed, and then once the hardened tip punched through the armour, the two-part detonator activated, mixing together two extremely volatile materials into the same chamber.

This round punched easily through the front armour of the left-most APC, made a gorey hole in the driver's chest, dismembered the commander's legs as he sat in his seat at the hatch, and lodged in the engine compartment at the rear of the transport. The resulting explosion turned it into a raging fireball, shrapnel splintering out and scything down a number of the Regulars that were using it as cover. A number of others hit the ground, desperate to find cover among the sparse sands.

Logas popped back up out of cover a moment later, taking aim at the second APC, only to suddenly fall back into cover as a flurry of high-calibre fire spattered him from the side. He grunted, reaching down to find several bloody wounds in his upper left chest and shoulder. One of them had punched all the way through his warsuit, though his shoulder, and out the other side.

"Damn it! Ice, Grinder's hit, we got contacts on our four!" Kandros barked, shifting his fire to pepper the enemy patrol car. He landed an incredibly lucky shot on the driver as the car was jerking to avoid a boulder, and it flipped up and over the boulder, landing in a crash of metal on stone. The enemy gunner, who had been standing head and shoulders out of the turret, was reduced to a red smear across the boulder, and the captain grimly accepted that as the price of his being on the other side of this conflict. He knew the potential price he was paying when he signed up for this.

With the car dealt with, Kandros rose and slid from cover to cover, making his way over to Volker, who was being treated by their medic, cursing up a storm about the inappropriate setting in which she was forced to do such complicated treatments. He ignored the complaining, fixing her with a sharp look.

"When will he be back in the fight, doc?" He asked, referring to her by that unofficial title for the first time since they'd met - a mark of respect, from him. He was, however, barely even thinking about that as he snapped up to fire a few more rounds at the enemy, just trying to discourage them from charging and using their greater numbers against them.

He dropped back down into cover, slapping the mag release to replace the empty sickle magazine with a fresh one, slotting it in place and racking the charging handle. He glanced over at his medic impatiently, and she snapped at him, just as impatiently.

"He should be in the hospital for a few months, but with the needs of the many, as soon as I can get him wrapped up like a damned mummy." She growled acidly, wrapping bandages around the still rather stunned looking drake.

"Sooner the better." The Raider commander ordered, though he knew he didn't have to say that. He was just doing it for his own comfort, to try to tell himself that they would get home, and Logas could go to the hospital for a few months. "We need his help to take out that other APC."

"Nice to know you care, chief." The drake said, his grin showing teeth gritted with pain, and the wolf couldn't help but gave a sheepish snort.

"Yeah, well, when you're not being an insufferable bastard, you're not half bad." He replied just as sardonically, making Ice shake her head at their exchange, finishing up the last bandage and tying it off before slipping off to her new cover.

Once again, Kandros rose from cover first, banging away to make the enemy keep their heads down as Logas rose smoothly to his feet despite the agony in his chest, and the grenade launcher thumped again, and the second APC burst like a tin can with a firecracker shoved inside, showering the surrounding troops with shrapnel.

For a moment, it seemed that the Royal Regulars across from the depleted, injured Raider Team would waver and fall back, but unfortunately, reinforcements chose just this moment to arrive, and now more than fifty soldiers were blazing away at the three. Shots chipped away at the cover they were hiding behind, chunks of stone and puffs of dust showing where the rounds were landing.

When the staccato chatter of a support weapon sprang up, however, the story changed. Some of those enterprising troops had managed to drag an automatic cannon up the hills, and they turned it against the boulders where the unlucky trio was still hunkering down. Twenty millimetre rounds tore up the rock far more than the smaller weapons, and suddenly this didn't seem like such a defensible position.

Kandros supposed he should be grateful that they hadn't gotten close enough to throw grenades, and that they had no mortars on hand, but as it was he wasn't inclined to feel grateful for anything. Instead, he stuck his rifle out around the rock, firing blindly in hopes of suppressing the enemy troopers presumably coming up on their position under the covering fire.

Then Logas stood up one more time, again ignoring the searing pain worming its way through his upper body, and he braced himself as he began firing with both weapon systems at once, wreaking a bloody toll among the gathered squads of enemy troops, and he even drew his sidearm and added that to the hail of gunfire raining down on them.

"Go! Get the hell out of here, I'll buy you time to get to the extraction!" He bellowed, barely flinching as a stray shot from the scattering enemy glanced off of his armoured snout and ricocheted off into the sand. His heavy duty pistol tracked in the direction of the shooter and it kicked once, twice, spelling the end of another enemy combatant.

"Like hell we're gonna leave you behind!" Kandros snarled, reaching out to grab his stubborn squadmate and pull him along. He got his hand slapped away and was shoved backwards for his trouble, the massive dragon still blazing away with everything he had.

"I'll just slow you down, damn it! Keep going and I'll hold the bastards off for as long as I can." As he spoke, he directed a rain of grenades down into the small gulley where the automatic cannon lurked, and its punishing fire stopped almost immediately.

"If you think we're leaving without you, you can damn well think again." Ice said sharply, coming up beside him in a crouched shooter's pose, her pistol hand supported by the other. Short, tight cracks added to his heavier weapons as she blazed away in single shots and short bursts whenever targets appeared.

When his captain also moved to kneel beside him, the drake eventually relented with a snarl. The trio pulled back as the milling, disorganised enemy struggled to regroup for a pursuit. They had been expecting a pushover capture of their foes, not a long-winded chase with their support being knocked out at every opportunity.

Kandros emptied the rest of his magazine to keep their heads down, ejecting the spent one into the ashy sand at his feet and replacing it with a fresh one without dropping his aim. He began backing up as he heard the steps of his comrades, and then he pivoted smoothly and sprang off after them.

The extraction point was still a kilometre off from their current location; they'd wanted the shuttle to be able to land without being detected by the base originally, and now it was in danger of being targeted by local AAA emplacements if it dared to venture any closer. They stumbled off in the direction of the site; he'd triggered the call for an emergency extraction the moment shit hit the fan, and they'd be met there with the same LIT-32 that had brought them in.

"Raptor, this is Butler, come in, over." He panted out between ragged breaths. The desperate pursuit was draining his reserves of stamina, and all three of them slid down into a low wadi, taking cover behind the tough plants that clung to stubborn life here.

The wolf's grin was utterly without humour as he contemplated how well his team matched those plants; desperately clinging to life. They took a few minutes to catch their breath, keeping an eye out for potential enemy pursuit or, hopefully, signs of their extraction.

For a terrible few minutes, no response came back, and Kandros was worried that they were being jammed, or perhaps that something had happened to their shuttle. Finally, though, in and out of squelches of white noise and interference, the voice of the pilot spoke up in the captain's earpiece.

"Butler, this is Raptor, we hear you." Crackles and pops rendered his voice almost unintelligible, but it sounded sweeter than the most innocent tenor in the galaxy, and Kandros almost burst out in laughter at the ridiculous comparison. He forced himself to maintain composure, however, and listened in as his saviour continued. "We're ten minutes from evac, we'll wait as long as we can get away with, over."

"Roger that, Raptor, we'll be there, out." He closed the link and started to stand, only to jerk back down as shots spat over his head. He raised his carbine, risking another quick peek out of the ravine, muttering a muffled curse and waving the others to attention, not that it needed doing.

Logas rose to his feet, a bit sluggishly, and once more he stood defiantly in the face of the enemy as his machine gun spooled up and began its song of death, the grenade launcher snapping out the occasional deeper retort. Kandros rose into a high crouch at the edge of the wadi, bracing his rifle on a rock and beginning to add his own fire to the mix. He could see some thirty troopers in the grey fatigues he'd come to hate tonight scattering, taking cover; they might have been careless before, and been a bit long in learning their lesson, but now it had sunk in good and deep.

They used their numbers, putting down enough fire to make even Volker drop down, and when Kandros rose up again to put more shots into them, he noticed that they were advancing in squads towards the impromptu trench his team was holding.

They did the best they could to hold them back, and they took a ferocious toll on the attacking forces, but even their training and fire discipline couldn't keep the last fifteen soldiers from rushing the ravine directly, yelling raw-throated war cries as they came on. Out of the corner of his eye, Kandros noted with dread another fifty or more Royal Regulars coming up over the crest of the nearby hill, led by a huge, dark-shrouded figure.

Then, in the wild melee that followed as the regulars charged him, he had no time to worry about any of that. He ducked the unskilled thrust of a bayonet-tipped rifle, his own carbine falling limp on its sling as his pistol came easily out of its holster and jammed into the soldier's gut. He pulled the trigger on auto, letting the recoil ride his aim up through the enemy combatant's chest, and he swiveled away as the opponent fell to the ground with a muffled cry.

He brought his right forearm up just in time to block another wild slash from the next trooper, the bayonet catching on the armour of his warsuit. He brought the arm holding his pistol down hard on the rifle and then allowed the arm he'd used to block to come forward, now holding his knife, sliding effortlessly over top of the left arm. It was all one smooth motion, and the vibrating blade of his combat knife punctured the other warrior's throat, making a gruesome, gristly mess of his trachea and severing his carotid artery. The look on the fox's face was nothing but surprise as he fell away, rifle tumbling to the ground.

Kandros was already past him, easily dodging aside from the swing of a grizzled-looking sergeant carrying a short-bladed knife, brass knuckles built into the hilt. He tried to slug with it, hoping to catch the Raider off guard, but the wolf was already on the move, and a well-aimed kick to the side of the sergeant's knee brought him to the ground. He screamed, clutching his freshly broken leg, but just for a moment until Kandros's knife plunged up through his jaw and into his brain. He slumped over as the blade was withdrawn, stone dead before he hit the ground.

Logas had his own battles to fight - he didn't bother with a melee weapon, preferring to wade in with his own heavy, armoured fists. He caught the first rifle coming towards him with one giant hand and snapped it in half, turning the barrel around with bayonet still attached and driving it halfway through his opponent's head. He shattered the next fighter's skull with a single powerful chop while the raw recruit was fumbling with his safety, trying to get a shot off. He tumbled to the ground, never having to manage fire at the enemy in anger.

Three enterprising soldiers sought to surround the massive dragon, attacking from all angles at once, and Volker surprised them by dropping to the ground when the bayonets stabbed in simultaneously. The move he performed looked more like a graceful dance move, far beyond what his bulky frame should be able to do. He leg-swept the first soldier, shattering both femurs with the force he propelled his armoured shin with, and then continued the upwards-arcing kick, landing square in the jaw of the next one, the sheer force of it turning his brain to jelly.

The drake then used the stopped momentum of impacting with the latest warrior to twist his body around, reversing the direction he had been going and springing up towards his last opponent. The uppercut crushed its way through armour and flesh, the clenched fist bursting free of the other side of his chest cavity in a spray of crimson, and the flesh puppet was dropped as Logas looked around for his next opponent but found himself alone.

That's when he realised the Revenant had entered the fray, when he watched that deadly scythe slashing upwards, leaving a crackling afterimage of green energy on Volker's eyes even through his visor. The incredibly swift attack severed Eldmir's arm at the elbow and she fell to the ground with an agonised scream, and the return stroke came inches from slashing her throat, saved only by her backwards motion.

Immediately, Logas raised his machinegun to tear the enemy apart, but he gave a helpless laugh as the weapon gave a dull clunk, signaling that he'd spent the last of his ammunition. He charged instead, drawing his sidearm and putting a couple of shots in the dark figure's back. They ricocheted off that heavy armour, but he hadn't expected anything different, he just wanted to get the killer's attention.

The Revenant was already turning to face him, that ridiculous black shroud swirling around its shoulders. It wasn't expecting him to be so close so fast though, for that deadly energy scythe was still rising to swipe, when he simply seized the figure bodily and hurled it backwards, out of the wadi and into a gaggle of advancing troopers. He glanced back, seeing that Kaldros was already moving forward to cover the downed medic and check on her health.

That left Logas free to kill the bastard that had done that to her. The drake leapt easily up out of the makeshift trench full of bodies, surging forward to meet the rising black form of his nemesis. The Revenant was expecting another wild charge, but he decided to prove he had more subtlety than that. He started to do just that thing, but he stopped and reared back at the last moment, his heavy sidearm clearing his holster and peppering the bone-mask helmet, shattering one of the cheekbones of the mask clean off and revealing the scratched black metal beneath.

That energy scythe had already been whipping out, and it caught nothing but the barrel of Volker's empty machinegun, shearing it off in a burst of sparks. The swing had overbalanced his opponent however, and the dragon took full advantage of that, grabbing the scythe to keep it low and left while his punch went high and right, crunching into his enemy's left shoulder, denting the armour and staggering the figure with a raspy grunt.

The butt of his opponent's scythe came up and clipped Logas on the chin, making him stumble a little, and the Revenant yanked its weapon clear and slashed vertically. The drake grunted in pain as he felt the last few inches of his tail severed by the weapon, but he'd managed to dodge most of the attack, and he swept in under its reach, delivering a thunderous blow to the figure's gut, making it bend down enough for him to slam his armoured head against its own.

A crunch sounded, and the figure staggered away, more of the bone falling away from its helmet, the scythe flagging to the ground and sputtering upon contact with the sand. Logas grinned from ear to ear under his helmet, ignoring the integrity warnings flashing up over his armour, taking a step forward and rolling his neck. These Revenants weren't so tough after all.

He grunted then as that scythe swiped out, faster than he could have anticipated, burying itself in his side. He staggered, the flood of pain worse than anything he'd ever experienced, and he realised when the blood began to fill his mouth that a number of his internal organs had been compromised, including a lung. He was surprisingly aware of this despite the agony, and he looked down to see that he was nearly cut in half about three quarters of the way up his torso. He wondered how he wasn't dead or unconscious yet, and he turned to look at his opponent.

The Revenant seemed as surprised as he was, and tried tugging the scythe out, but it was stuck fast. Logas nearly fell from the pain of that weapon grating against his bones, but he forced his arm to work, reaching out and seizing the shaft of the scythe. The other grabbed the edge of that damned stupid cloak and yanked, pulling the figure in against him as his empty machinegun cycled, and began to point towards the ground between their feet.

"I disabled the time delay fuse, you son of a bitch."

The grenade launcher mounted to the side of his primary weapon gave one last thunk, and his world ended in fire and pain.

Kaldros was too busy fighting tooth and nail for his life and the life of the snow leopardess slumped against a rock behind him to pay attention to Logas's battle with the Revenant. He had emptied a dozen magazines of pistol ammo into the onrushing soldiers as they tried to overwhelm him, and Eldmir had supported him from her position, clawing her pistol out of the dead fingers of her severed arm and firing with the left.

By the time the Regulars broke off the attack, dozens of bodies littered the bottom of the wadi, soaking the sands red with spilled blood. Kaldros leaned down, picking the semi-conscious snow leopardess up and slinging her over his shoulder as he scrambled clear of the ditch and looked around for Logas.

He saw them just as that fatal sweep of the scythe nearly bisected his second in command. Kaldros let out a scream of rage and disbelief, watching the dragon drag his killer in close. He could swear he saw the grenade exiting the barrel in slow motion, no matter how ridiculous it seemed, and he staggered as the shockwave hit him. He started sprinting over, but he pulled up short as he saw the gorey mass that filled the new crater in the sand.

He had a strong stomach; in this business, you had to, or you'd be puking your guts out nine days out of ten. He'd seen far worse than this, even, in his career. But that was Volker Logas, what was left of him anyways... his second in command. The drake had been an old, crotchety bastard, and he could hardly have been called friendly, but they'd known each other.

He realised he didn't have time to linger, though, and he silently paid his respects to one hell of a soldier as he adjusted the pain-drunk medic slung across his shoulders. He couldn't even afford to stop and tend to her wounds, and he just had to trust that the cauterisation would keep her from bleeding out long enough to get to the extraction point.

The final sprint to the evac was one of the hardest runs in his life; the combat high left him jittery and feeling sick, and he couldn't help but think about how poorly this had gone. He couldn't get the sight of Alexander's grinning head hitting the sand, and now it competed with the gruesome wreck that was Logas's mutilated body in the crater.

Finally, his body nearly giving out under the stress and the pain of wounds he didn't even remember receiving in that wild close-quarters brawl, he stumbled up the crest of a dune and looked down to see the extraction point, a wide, flat plateau, just ahead.

Laughing raggedly, he stumbled onwards, realising that he was finally going to get out of this hellhole, and he was going to bring Ice out with him, he was going to save somebody on this cursed team. The dull rumble of engines in the distance told him that Raptor was on its way, and he looked up to see the low, understated form of the LIT swooping in from the north.

"Raptor, this is Butler." Kandros rasped as he stumbled down the rest of the way into the low, flat terrain, heading towards the broad plateau that looked over the scenic canyon below. The very first hints of sunrise could be seen in the distance, painting everything unusual colours. He shook his head, annoyed at his own lack of concentration.

He realised he was shaking, and as he finally managed to get Eldmir up onto the plateau, he let her slide to the ground, and slumped forward into the sand, panting as he watched the transport soar in overhead. His laughter became hysteric as the shuttle came in closer, kicking up massive plumes of dust as it settled down. The ramp opened achingly slowly, and the crew chief opened up with the rear-mounted machine gun, mowing down a squad of infantry that had been hurrying up to investigate the vessel.

"Get up! Get in!" He bellowed over at the slumped, bloodied Raiders. When they didn't move, he ordered a pair of medics out to drag them inside. One of them gingerly lifted Ice and hurried her inside, assessing her multitude of wounds and immediately carrying her to the small troop transport's medical facility, located just behind the cockpit.

The other medic helped Kandros inside, talking to him the whole time that they stumbled in, and he immediately got the shaking wolf seated on one of the benches. The captain gratefully sat, and he looked up as the medic spoke again, hearing him clearly for the first time.

"Where's the rest of the team, sir? Where are the others?" He prompted, assessing the canine's various wounds and grimacing. It wasn't good... he was pretty sure the officer would live, but he would probably be retired after this. What could tear up a Raider Team like this?

"We're... it, specialist." Kandros said, his voice oddly quiet as he reached up and unclasped his helmet, leaving bloody handprints on it as he tossed it to the other side and looked the medic directly in the eye. "We're all that's left."

There was stunned silence for a few minutes, but by then it was clear that he was being serious, and nobody else was coming. The ramp closed again, and the engines started up, A few stray shots spanked off of it as it rose away, but they were hastily aimed and nothing penetrated as the shuttle speared off into the sky, activating its afterburners to help it tear through the atmosphere into the vast atmosphere of space above.

Kandros sat staring blankly out of the tiny porthole for the entire trip, watching the slowly rising sun until it was out of sight. He then simply watched the blackness of the dark side of the planet, and then the endlessly twinkling stars as they broke through the atmosphere at last. He ignored the questions the crew members hesitantly posed to him, shaking still even an hour after he'd disengaged.

He'd finally allowed the medic to treat his many wounds, looking down at the obviously scared kid and asking the only question that he was able to ask at the time.

"How's Ice?" He asked in a voice far away. He hated how weak he sounded, but he couldn't do anything about it, so he didn't try. All he wanted to know was if just one other member of his team could survive this fiasco.

"Ice? Oh, uh, yes, sir. Sergeant Eldmir is expected to make a full recovery. The worst wound was, uh, cauterised on contact, and the others are comparatively minor. The Alliance will take good care of her though, don't you be worried about that." The medic did his best to spin a bad thing into a good one, but the captain knew better.

"Yeah, I'm sure. Slim chance of that." He muttered bitterly, feeling a twinge, an itch in his shin, the metallic replacement to his flesh and blood. It still itched, but he knew he couldn't do a damn thing to help it - he couldn't scratch cybernetics, after all. It had no nerves. It was just phantom sensations. He realised Ice would have to put up with the same things.

"Yusova." He corrected himself aloud, ignoring his attendant's strange look. Her name wasn't Ice, it was Yusova. Ice was the nickname she'd be given, it was her military name. And he didn't think either of them would stay in the military after this even if they had any great urge to do so.

For now though, he had only the long trip back and the dark thoughts in his head to keep him company. He dropped his head into his hands, mindless of the drying blood on them. He had so much blood on his hands, what was a little on his face?

Maybe he'd stay with Yusova for a while, help her get used to the agony of having a cybernetic limb replacement attached directly to the raw stump. She might have more trouble, what with the cauterisation. She might welcome his help, or just the company, he'd have to ask when she woke up.

Maybe he'd ask when he woke up, too. He was curious as to what would happen when he finally awoke from this nightmare.

Some day, he might just find out.