Under Sarge's instruction, we took our positions, arranged in a wide arc around the door. The attack angles would ensure we could each engage an enemy in the room without risking friendly fire.

The tension was nearly unbearable as I waited, squatting with my gun at the ready.

"Go," Sarge commanded finally, and I tapped the tablet. The droid crawled forward, and the door opened with a gentle swish.

There was no light within the room. Now that the droid had rolled further in, it was only visible as a dark blob. Yet, nothing happened, there were no shouts of alarm, no volley of bullets, not even the sound of snoring. Just silence. It was all something of an anti-climax. My trigger finger itched impatiently, should I fire just in case?

I glanced at the others. Robinson and Westcott both stared intently at the darkness. Their expressions were very different. Westcott had the wide eyes of a child daring to face the monster under the bed. He'd be as likely to break and run as fire if an Orc emerged. Robinson was different; his face was drawn tight in concentration. Killing was just part of the job to him, and he seemed to be daring an enemy to emerge.

Sarge tapped me on the shoulder and with quick gestures commanded Robinson and I to advance. My flashlight illuminated a narrow section in front of me as I moved rapidly in. Squatting to the right of the doorway, Using the beam like a searchlight, I scrutinized the room as if my life depended upon it. It probably did.

The torch revealed that the Orc base had once been similarly styled to our ready-room, although larger. Like our room, it’s main focus was a large black leather couch. However in this arrangement the couch ran the entire length of the chambers long walls and there were no tables in front of it. Instead in the center of the room an imposing table sat with just two chairs present.

The original decorations, however, were where the resemblance to our ready-room ended. We had kept our area neat and tidy. Sarge was a stickler for order, and each of us had accepted the need to clean and maintain our area.

Orcs apparently didn't share this compulsion and had lived here long enough to redecorate. The walls of the room had been daubed with graffiti. Large angry red and green hieroglyphs decorated the walls. Much of the scrawl resembled graffiti tags or perhaps gang markings. A disfigured Orc face with the words' Blind Cruelty' took obvious prominence amongst the other messages. It was obvious that this had importance to those who lived here.

The rest of the room was no better, clutter was nearly everywhere I looked. Ripped clothing, metallic devices with shattered glass screens, guns, and knives of all varieties lay discarded carelessly on the floor.

In amongst the chaos, there were only two ordered areas. The first was obviously a cooking area. Next to a small fire pit, a huge mound of bones was neatly stacked. Each had been picked clean of any meat. I didn't recognize the species that the bones belonged to. The size and shape of them made me feel slightly queasy. They didn't look like they'd been cattle, though.

My nanobots understood my curiosity, and labels overlaid my vision. Arachnia, Drell, Kabal, and others all appeared in quick succession. These confirmed what I had feared. The Orcs weren't just completing their missions. They were eating those they defeated.

As I imagined my corpse being butchered for meat, an icy fear spread through my veins, and the acidic taste of bile rose into my throat. I spat onto the floor and stubbornly pushed those thoughts aside. This wasn't the time to give in to terror. There was work to be done.

The first table was piled with half-eaten food and golden trinkets. The only clear area upon it contained the faint remains of a line of white powdery substance.

However, the table beside it wouldn't have looked out of place in a corporate office. A small stack of books was piled in the corner of its neatly polished surface. Beside them was a pad of paper, and what I presumed were writing implements. Each was arranged meticulously at right degree angles—a haven of order within the chaos elsewhere within the room.

"Clear," Robinson barked behind me.

Sarge stalked into the room, his eyes scanned the room efficiently as he verified Robinsons' call. Finally, he nodded and confirmed, "Clear. Robinson, watch the exit. The rest of us will take a few minutes to build intel."

I didn't need telling twice. Hurdling the couch, I plonked myself down in front of the neat table and picked up one of the books. 'Hacking with your mind' There was no author ascribed to it. Flicking through it quickly, I was somewhat surprised to discover it was a programming manual of some kind. My time at university had given me some working knowledge of COBOL, but little of the terms mentioned in the book made sense to me. Red scrawl marked nearly all the pages, and some sections were underlined or circled for emphasis.

The other books were of a similarly technical ilk, 'The guts of the gun' had several bullet studded skulls on its cover. Yet once opened, it appeared to be a reference guide to repairing weaponry—strange reading for what appeared to be a blood-thirsty race.

Giving up on the technical manuals, I picked up the notepad. Its pages were covered in the same scrawling writing that I'd found in the manuals. According to the title page, this was the 'Clan Journal.'

"Peters, find anything?" Sarge stood over me, breaking my concentration.

"Perhaps, these are the records of the clan's history."

"Well, what is it?" Sarge asked in an annoyed voice.

"The writer is a programmer," I tapped the books on the table. "I expect that is how they opened the doors. There might be more details on her capabilities in this journal .." I paused meaningfully.

Sarge nodded tautly and looked at his watch. "You have ten minutes, make them count. We need to secure that hill within the hour, or it won't matter either way."

I was already back thumbing through the pages quickly. The early chapters detailed various mercenary engagements, and it took a while to find the section where they'd joined the Imperial Numeri. Apparently, the clan had been pressed into service after being on the losing side of a particularly bloody engagement.

I leaned back into the chair and put my feet up, as I settled into my customary position for a long read.