Chapter Forty-Nine - Hunters

“They call themselves ‘Hunters’ as if they’re big-game hunters straight out of some early nineteenth century Victorian gentlemen’s club.

Normal blokes with too much time and money on their hands who rush over to incursion sites armed to the teeth. They capture their ‘hunts’ on video then use them to brag to each other. The best ones have followings online and promote all sorts of stuff.

Sometimes they’ll even run across a passing Samurai and either get told off for being morons or will get a pat on the back for killing some xenos.”

--Extract from a Reddit F.A.Q., 2035

***

I parted from Major Hunt with a slap on the back for my good ‘xeno killing work’ and a shove back to my babysitter.

“I was instructed to escort you to advanced team fifty-one,” the big guy said.

Nodding, I followed him out of the little command tent and back out onto the bustling main ground of the temporary base. Now that I knew just a bit more about what was going on, I could appreciate the groups of soldiers running past and the rumbling of vehicles heading to the front a bit more.

We waited as a large armoured van passed by, its back door opened to reveal twin rows of normal folk all huddled together and looking like they had been through a nightmare.

People rescued from the incursion zone?

“How does the whole saving people thing work?” I asked. “I mean. Say I find a bunch of folk out there. Do I escort them all the way back?”

Soldier boy shook his head. “No ma’am. If you’ll allow us to connect to your aug-gear, we’ll give you the locations of forward bases and rendez-vous points. Escorted combat groups will meet up with you there and take any VIPs and civilians back here to be processed and evacuated.”

I didn’t like the sound of ‘processed.’ He said it the same way someone might ‘process’ someone’s credit info, which was probably exactly what was happening. As long as they didn’t try to pull any funny business on my Kittens I’d honestly probably not do anything about it, but still.

“Do I have a target or something?” I asked.

He shrugged.

Finally a crack in his little professional attitude.

We reached a spot near the barricade where little all-terrain vehicles were parked, little Humvee look-alikes with roof-mounted guns and actual wheels instead of hover systems. It was all a bit old-school, but judging by how armoured the things looked, it wasn’t too surprising. “Team Fifty One,” soldier boy called out.

Eight soldiers, all in the same flat-grey almost-armoured uniforms as my escorts lined up in two rows before me. They varied in height and stature, but they all seemed like they could handle themselves.

One of them stepped up, the shortest one in the entire lot, but also the one with the most marks on his shoulders and breastplate. “Team Fifty-One reporting,” he said.

Soldier boy saluted. “I’m handing off Tier One Samurai Stray Cat into your care, Team Fifty-One.”

“Acknowledge,” Short-stack said with a return salute.

“Good luck ma’am,” my escort said before he moved off.

And then I found myself the centre of attention of a bunch of soldiers. I wished that I could turn invisible without it being a big social faux-pas. “Sup?”

“We’re in your care, Miss Stray Cat,” the short one said.

“Uh. Sure?” I said. They were probably all a few years older than me, which just... yeah, made shit weird. “I’m not big on saluting and such, can we skip ahead to the actual goal of this thing?”

“Yes ma’am! Have you been briefed?”

“Sure.”

Shorty nodded. “In that case, we’re ready to go whenever you are. We have two vehicles at our disposal. At your disposal. As well as clearance to cross the barricade sans inspection.”

Was that important? “I call shotgun?” I tried.

There was a snicker from some of the soldiers, but short-stuff didn’t seem to mind at all. He tapped the side of the nearest armoured car. “This one’s ours, ma’am.”

I moved to the passenger side of the car, if only to get away from all the staring. Should I get a shirt that covered my stomach? Had they been staring that way? It was hard to tell with their visors.

Which reminded me, I needed some cool shades too.

I pulled open the passenger door of the truck... car thing and jumped onto a hard-plastic seat. The back had room for three, including a little station that looked to control the gun mounted to the roof, and the driver’s seat was surrounded by a whole load of screens that I could only hoped had to do with driving the vehicle.

Shortstack jumped in the back behind the driver’s seat and the rest climbed in in a hurry. “I’m Sergeant Monroe,” Shorty said.

“Pleased to meetcha Monroe,” I said. “So, where are we heading to?”

Monroe seemed caught off-guard by that, but he was quick to rally. “Our main objective is the Patterson Research Hospital in area G17. There’s a caravan of transports heading there, as well as six other squads. We were assigned to Eagle Platoon until you came around. Now we’re assigned to you, ma’am.”

So they were heading to some hospital with a bunch of others to pick up sick folk? That... sounded alright. “When is... Eagle platoon heading out?”

“In twelve minutes, ma’am. ETA to the hospital is seven minutes if the roads are clear.”

“Expecting a lot of resistance on the way?” I asked.

“No,” he said with a shake of his head. “But the unloading will take nearly half an hour, maybe more. There’s still a lot of staff left. We need to hope it won’t take two trips.”

“Can we head out early?” I asked.

The driver seemed to take that as an order because she--at least, I assumed a she based on the shape of her chest armour--put the car into gear and pulled out of the parking area. “This is Five-One, pulling out of FOB with VIP,” the driver said while tapping one of her screens.

“Permission granted.”

“O-kay,” I said as I leaned into the most uncomfortable seat ever. The gear hanging off my back was cool and all, but it wasn’t made for sitting down comfortably. “That answers that. I guess we’ll get to the hospital and give it a look-see. Is it in any danger?”

“We don’t think so,” Monroe said. “The hospital has its own security force. It’s one of those nice private ones, with the VIP ambulances. It’s also pretty far from the red-zones.”

“Red-zones?” I asked.

He was quick to fill in the gap in my knowledge. “Zones go from black, which is full-on hive territory, to red, to orange, to green. White zones are outside of the incursion area. The hospital is on the outside of an orange zone. Some aliens, but not that many. Mostly advanced scouts for now.”

“Then aren’t we a bit of overkill?” I asked.

The other two soldiers looked at each other. “You might be, ma’am,” Monroe said. “But we’re not equipped for anything past the single-digit models, which is what will be popping up in the red-zones soon enough.”

Was I overestimating myself? The hospital run was starting to sound like it was meant to be a cake-walk, the tutorial area that I’d missed out on. “We’ll see,” I said. I chose to change the subject. “What are you guys equipped for?”

“We’re all equipped with light arms, and we have two heavy fraggers with us. If we can set them up, we can cover a decent choke-point.”

“The fuck is a fragger?”’ I asked.

Monroe chuckled. “Not all of us have a Samurai’s aim, ma’am. Hitting the smaller models is hard, so our heavy guns fire fragmentation rounds that burst in mid-air. They’ll clear out a flock of Model Ones in no time.”

I nodded. Were they scared of Model Ones? They were kitted out like pros; it didn’t make sense that they’d be afraid of some demon pigeons.

“That’s nice,” I said.

A moment later I was distracted as we rolled past the barricade. I had been wrong when I assumed that it was just a pile of sandbags. There were also thick cement barriers in the middle of it, with platforms above where gunners had set up. The opening left for trucks to pass was barely wide enough for us to move through, and the thing blocking it was a heavy tank with a stubby gun mounting on its turret.

I craned my neck back to watch the tank as we went by because it was a tank and those were pretty fucking cool.

“Looking for inspiration for your next ride?” the driver asked.

“You mean the tank?” I asked.

I’m afraid that the Armoured Assault Vehicle catalogue would drastically reduce your point count. The class I catalogue alone costs five hundred points, and a vehicle comparable to that one would easily cost a few thousand points.

I clamped my mouth shut. I didn’t want to be caught out screaming ‘I can buy tanks?!’ while around all the soldier types.

“Yeah. I saw a Samurai tank once,” the driver said.

I heard groans from two of the three soldiers behind me.

“It’s true!” the driver defended herself.

I leaned back into my shitty seat and sighed. I wanted to be back with Lucy, not heading in exactly the opposite direction.