The Troglodyte had lost more than most to the scum in the clearing, so she and her sisters were eager to repay that debt with blood.
“They aren’t all sleeping.” One of the more level-headed Amazons warned; “They’ve posted many sentries, since early in the evening. Whoever is leading them is no fool.”
“Tristan.” Alcaia spoke the name like a curse as she held her hands palm up, fingers curled like claws; “His name is Tristan Grove and with these hands I will kill him.”
The Amazons were sympathetic, remembering well the sight of their warleader and her wife intimately bathing the man in question.
“They have also set up a strange weapon on one side of their camp.” The Amazon continued; “I’ve not seen its like before but it must be important as they dug up the ground and moved some brush to form a crude barrier around it.”
“Describe it to me.” Adrian Shaw instructed with brow furrowed.
As a highly trained member of the ordinance disposal division of the Aegis, he knew every piece of lost-tech weaponry by sight.
“It is longer and larger than a blaster, with a narrow barrel and two sticks of metal jutting out of the bottom of it to support the end off the ground.”
He listened intently, and when she finished he groaned and nodded.
“A bipod. Which means they have a gatling. Shit.”
“It is one weapon.” Sila said flatly.
“Yes, and if we formed a line for the one using it, he could sweep it around and kill every one of us in the span of a few second.”
As he spoke he held up his fist and turned in a slow circle, jerking his arm rapidly to indicate the weapon’s recoil.
The Trog bristled at his words and the threatening gesture with a sharp hiss, but didn’t argue.
“How do we counter it, Adrian?” Alcaia asked.
He ran his hand through his shaggy hair in agitation, absently longing for the days when Cheri and her scissors would keep it under control.
“The protocol would normally be to use a combination of strobes and stinger gas to force them to abandon it. But without my gear…” Clutching at the side of his skull he wracked his brain for a solution, but was coming up short; “Charging it is suicide. Even with those Vohan-shield things, if the guy aiming it focuses fire he will tear them apart one by one. If we aren’t careful this will turn into a bloodbath.”
Sila’s tongue darting out briefly, belying her impatience.
“Then, what do you suggest sssoftskin?” She demanded.
He pinched the bridge of his nose as his eyes squinted closed, struggling to find a way to keep the bloodthirsty girls from getting themselves killed.
After months of pain and mourning and anger, it was hard for him to be the voice of reason, but how to de-escalate a situation was one of the components of Aegis training and he was reminded of it now when faced with so many angry monster girls.
As much as he wanted justice for his Truffle and his team, he didn’t want it to come at the cost of the lives of the Trogs or Alcaia and her people.
He stared at the diagram, something tickling at him as he did.
“Why did they set it up way over there?”
He was more asking himself, but he got an answer from one of the Amazons that had helped to draw the map.
“The prisoners and the ones that deceived us are sleeping separately, with a gap all the way through… here.”
She traced her toe through the dirt, drawing a line straight across the camp.
Adrian gnawed at his lip as he stared at the divot that represented the gatling, but then the answer came to him so quickly that he let out a noise of incredulity in his throat.
“They’ve got it set up far enough away so that the prisoners can’t rush it!”
Sila actually smiled.
“My people have a sssaying. There is no commonality amongst criminals. This could be a weakness to exploit. When they attacked us in the desert, it was those that we kept in chains that led the charge and suffered the most casualties.”
“So maybe Tristan and his group are hoarding the best weapons for themselves. But they must be giving the prisoners something otherwise why would they stay together?” Alcaia mused.
“Ammunition.” Adrian snapped his fingers with a broad smile; “Every lost-tech weapon needs ammunition. For the blasters it is a special cell, for the gatling it is metallic projectiles fed into it on a belt.”
“Where are you taking us with this?”
He gestured at the diagram again.
“Setting aside the gatling for now, the amount of lost-tech they have is the problem.” He reasoned.
Sila crossed her arms over her armoured breasts, but otherwise waited for him to continue.
“Which means that we- I, have to mitigate that.”
“How?” Alcaia prompted, willing to embrace any plan that would minimize the danger to her people.
He pointed towards the center of the rough diagram and looked to the Amazon that had sketched it.
“The crates are here? In the middle of the clearing?”
“Yes. Their tents and lean-tos are set up on either side of it. The deceivers here, and the ones from the desert here.”
“But nobody in particular is actually guarding the crates?” He pressed.
Her eyes narrowed as she began to cotton on to his intentions.
“No… the sentries are around the perimeter of the camp, right where they ought to be.”
Gnawing on his lip, he came up with the only obvious solution.
“If I can get to them, I can cut off their supply of ammunition, if I can just mess with-”
But once again Sila hissed at him.
“You would never have time to sabotage their entire arsenal!”
He mustered his patience as best he could, staring at the rough map drawn in the ground and working the problem.
“I won’t need to. I only need to sabotage one. They have all this lost-tech stacked up in one place, which might make them easier to keep track of, but isn’t very smart.”
“How so?” Alcaia asked, her voice level.
She trusted that he knew what he was talking about, at least when it came to the enemy’s weapons.
“When the Aegis stores our lost-tech, we do it in small caches, because even one of these-” He held up his lone remaining strobe for their consideration; “-will explode under the right conditions.”
Sila looked ready to object again, but then her head tilted to one side as she began to see the merit of his plan.
“How do you create the right conditions?”
He held up a simple pair of pliers with a dark smirk on his face, it was one of the few items that he had on his belt when his team was ambushed.
“Give me two minutes with one of those crates and I will level the center of their camp.”
They all went silent for a few seconds, until one of Sila’s warriors broke in with a somewhat sarcastic tone.
“Not very ambitious.”
“Or sporting.” Olena remarked for the first time.
The Witch was sitting on a nearby log, cleaning a series of her bone needles in her lap with a little green cloth and deliberate movements of her fingers.
She barely seemed interested in the discussion at all, but no one dared challenge her on it.
He rolled his eyes and gestured towards the diagram again.
“If you attack from the opposite side of the camp from where they have the gatling set up, they may never get a chance to fire it before the smoke clears.”
“And how will you get past the dreaded weapon to begin with?” Sila demanded.
He did his best to project confidence when he answered.
“I’m well-aware of how miserable I look, so if I’m lucky I should fit right in.” Once again he lamented the state of his hair and clothes, and the lack of a bath in the last several days; “I think that all I need is a way to get into the camp without too much fuss.”
Alcaia nodded and tappe
d at one side of the map with her toe.
“If you circle around their camp, there is a gulley… here?” She looked to the scout for a nod of confirmation; “If you are quick and quiet, you should be able to sneak up it and into where the prisoners have been sleeping without being seen by the men manning the gatling.”
The scout was quick to agree with her warleader, squatting down beside him to offer what advice she could, her fingers gesturing at the map as she spoke.
“If you approach the crates from that side, Tristan and his ilk shouldn’t be able to see you so easily amongst the prisoners. And given that you are wearing the same clothes as them, whatever their condition, the prisoners would likely see you as one of Tristan’s men and may not challenge you at all. This could work.”
The Trogs standing amongst them were measuring Adrian with their eyes.
“Fine.” Sila finally agreed; “We will follow your lead… Aegis.”
She spoke the title somewhat grudgingly, but had to acknowledge that his plan was a good one.
Or at the very least it was better than nothing.
“Assuming everything works out.” Alcaia gestured back at the crude map; “We must still figure out a plan of attack once he pulls off his scheme.”
Adrian sighed.
“So… nobody is going to try and talk me out of it?” He lamented to himself.
Finished with her needles, the Witch came over to kiss him on the cheek and pat his shoulder.
There there.
Chapter 8:
Sneaking, Flirting, Killing
It took the Amazons and Trogs until just after dawn to finalize everything and prepare for the attack.
It was convenient timing, as the growing light made the tired sentries less attentive while they waited impatiently for someone to relieve them.
Alcaia knew that this was the hardest part: the waiting, but she was disciplined enough to endure it, and through her example, so too were her warriors.
On the opposite side of the clearing from where she and her girls were hidden she could see the crude bulwark around the gatling, the men manning it fatigued but ready to unleash the weapon at a moment’s notice.
Her grip on her spear tightened as she glared death at the oblivious men, but still she waited.
At the bottom of the gulley Adrian was a taut bundle of nerves, his experience with the Aegis nothing like what he was about to attempt, so he took several deep and steadying breaths, his eyes closing.
If he failed so many of the monster girls depending on him, perhaps even all of them, would die.
Which meant he could not fail.
His thoughts darkened as he realized exactly how far he was willing to go to get the job done.
Because his plan only extended as far as getting into the camp, he had nothing for after that.
A strange sort of tranquility descended on him when he accepted that so long as he could destroy the lost-tech weapons, the sole reason he and his team were sent into the wilds to begin with, he really didn’t care about coming back out again.
With that settled, his eyes flew open and he was moving.
He scrambled up the dirt and roots quickly, using his hands as much as his feet to climb up.
To his consternation though, someone called to him from above.
“Oi! Who is that?”
“Get over here you idiot!” He shouted back in a harsh whisper without thinking; “They’re coming!”
“Shit! Where?!”
By this point he had reached the top of the gulley and was right in front of the alarmed and armed sentry.
At that moment what kept Adrian alive was the continuing distrust between the two factions within the camp, because when he spoke of danger the man looked inwards instead of out, and so was looking away from him.
Adrian grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him into a shoulder throw that he hadn’t used since his days at the academy, rolling the man over his back and into a nasty tumble down the gulley.
He didn’t stick around to see if he was okay.
Instead he forced himself to slow down, and walk out of the trees, expecting at any moment to be challenged or simply shot as he did his best to blend in with the coarse group complaining about the early hour.
Half of them were still asleep, but with the rising light even the most exhausted among them were beginning to stir.
Adrian’s heart was hammering in his throat as he casually scanned around the camp while picking his way towards the crates.
Then his foot caught on something, a man’s bare foot, sticking out of one of the crude lean-tos.
“Whozzat?” The sleepy occupant demanded.
“Shut up if you know what’s good for ya.” He replied in a hoarse voice, flying by the seat of his pants again.
“Mmm’kay.” The drowsy man grumbled; “Five more minutes.”
Adrian couldn’t believe he was still alive.
His eyes found the crates: at least twenty of them in various sizes, piled up to be just short of his height.
They were forty feet away, and still no one challenged him.
If he’d been running or sneaking, someone might have taken notice, but he moved with such casual purpose that the few that looked up at him accepted it without a second thought.
Thirty feet.
He heard a harsh cough from nearby, followed by the distinctly unpleasant sound of someone relieving themselves in the dirt.
His face twisted in disgust at the man pissing so close to where everyone was sleeping, but he kept moving.
Now ten feet from the crates.
Adrian forced himself to stop again, stretching out his arms and scratching at his stomach as if he had just woken up; he faked a yawn and shifted his neck around to see if anyone had noticed him yet.
Still alive.
He walked over to the crates and sat on one of them, putting his back against another as he brought his foot up, making a show of fixing his boot while surreptitiously looking around.
No one was paying him any attention at all, so he twisted in his seat and set to work.
His hands steady despite his nerves, he pulled his pliers off his belt and began to pry one of the wooden slats off the side of the box he had been leaning against.
To the casual observer it seemed like he was just absently carving his name into it.
Once the wood came free he spotted exactly what he was hoping to find inside.
It was full of blaster power cells.
The Aegis mechanist pulled one out, having to wiggle it back and forth to get it free of the orderly stack within the box, then wiped the sweat out of his eyes before continuing.
“This is by far the stupidest thing I’ve ever done in my life.” He muttered to himself as he worked the tip of his pliers into the casing of the cell.
“Seemed pretty stupid to me too.” A coarse voice said from beside him.
He froze when he felt the muzzle of a caster press against his ear, a square jawed woman with blood-shot eyes and a red nose glaring down at him.
“On your feet pretty boy, Tristan will want a word before I get to make you my bitch.”
__________
While Adrian was still wending his way through the prisoners’ camp, at the bottom of the gulley the sentry he’d grappled with picked himself up out of the dirt with a curse and a groan.
Before he could sound the alarm though, a female voice came from right beside him.
“Oh no! That was such a nasty fall!”
He jerked around to face the fretting falsetto; he’d lost his gun in the gulley, so he pulled his knife from his belt as he moved.
But the beauty standing before him was completely naked, and all thoughts of violence were driven from his head as he looked her over from her tits to her toes.
She stepped closer, her eyes wide and communicating nothing but concern for his wellbeing, as if he were the center of her world.
“Are you alright daddy?” She asked, her voice still so ve
ry high and innocent.
He couldn’t speak, didn’t even remember how.
Despite her naive behaviour, she was a full grown woman, with an emphasis on woman.
Her skin was pale and clear, with full breasts topped with pert nipples, and hips that swayed with promise as he watched. Her hair was thick and lusciously dark, the colour a match for the little thatch above her sex, and in that moment all he wanted to do was fold himself into her naked body, bury his face in her mane and breathe.
But her fingers on his chin stopped him, directing his gaze away from her nakedness and into her eyes.
They were green, unnaturally so, and looking into them was positively… bewitching.
The sentry staggered towards her, drunk on her nakedness and his own hungers, and while he did Olena’s innocent act fell away as readily as her clothing had.
“That’s it, big strong man.” She accepted his embrace and crooked her bare leg around his calf; “Will you take what I have to give?”
Eldritch mist flowed from her mouth and eyes when she asked, seeping into the stupefied man as he nodded.
With her breasts mashing into his chest, and her skin so smooth beneath his hands, he would do just about whatever she wanted him to.
“Say it.” Her voice was husky and heavy with erotic anticipation as she moaned and begged into his ear; “Tell me, please! I need to hear it daddy!”
Why she had chosen that particular moniker was anybody’s guess, but it did the trick.
“I’m gunna take everything you have!” He swore as he pressed his pelvis hard into hers, his lusty vision clouding with the green mist she was exuding.
And with the words spoken, she sealed his fate; his entire body going rigid as her power continued to seep into him.
Once it was finished, he stood before her blank-faced and waiting.
She casually tossed her clothes back on, all traces of her earlier lust gone, and once dressed her eyes flashed green again as she nodded at him.
“Run along little boy. They are waiting for you.”
With his will torn away from him, or rather given away by him, the bewitched man turned and scrambled back up the gulley, oblivious to the little cuts and bruises his reckless clumsiness inflicted as he went.
The Heartstone Saga Page 7
