A Spider Amongst Flies

[l3wt]

Sunlight started creeping into the Gaian night sky. It was quiet, sudden like a stab wound, bleeding an ethereal, progressively brighter purple hue into the previously black-blue.

James always found these first hours of the day comforting - though this jungle never slept, he noticed the change in the sounds, the impressions. Diurnal life took the field, nocturnals went to find their holes to rest in. None of the wildlife here was like any creatures he was familiar with, from the Bretonian core worlds or otherwise.

Yet he found that the rhythm of life here was much like that of other places, and it made everything seem slightly less alien.

He often thought about things like these as he stalked through the strange vegetation, rifle held in a loose, flexible ready position. He crept through underbrush, took detours around large vegetation masses, measured every step with precision. Disturb nothing. Make no sound. Be just another environment feature. And watch everything.
James understood something essential about jungle fighting - it necessitated a deliberate, extremely cautious movement speed in the pre-contact stages of any fight. The first one to be seen was always the first to die.

And then, once chaos erupted and bullets started flying, immediately gain the upper hand, move quickly, and exploit every weakness. That way, once the guns went quiet, you would be the one walking away... Hopefully.

It went on like this as he navigated towards the squad that had been sent to track him down. Move. Stop. Watch. Listen. Repeat. For a long time, all he heard was the regular chatter of a millions of creatures looking to reproduce. Sometimes he saw a bush rustle, rifle snapping up towards the disturbance and his heart pounding in his ears - only to relax again once he realized that it was just another one of the many-legged creatures lurching away after getting a little too curious.

Last sensor report had put the squad he was hunting out at 500 metres and closing. He was moving around their estimated approach route, trying to catch them blind as they moved past him. Still though, the estimate was just that, an estimate. He had to be prepared for the option that he would run into someone by surprise.

There were no real clearings in this place. Just natural animal pathways amongst dense green matter, sighting ranges no more than a few dozen metres at any one time. Thermals usually weren't very good here, with so many living creatures. Once you discerned a man from the rest of the jungle, he would already have put a bullet or some projected energy between your eyes.

He was moving along the side of a modest incline when he first heard it: the natural sounds had grown... lesser, like someone had suddenly told the vast chorus of life around him to pipe down a bit.

That made him stop immeditely. They had to be close. One squad of ten, two teams. Think. They wouldn't move on the top of the incline with that number. Too visible. Skylighting was still possible, even in this dense vegetation. That meant they were either on the side of it - like him - or further down at the bottom.

He carefully laid down flat, and remained motionless and pretty much invisible to the naked eye in the underbrush. Detached his pack from his rigging, he'd find it later. But for now, he needed mobility - not gear. His chest rig held a full complement of ammunition, as well as enough rations for a full 24 hours.

It should be plenty.

Then he waited. The suit's advanced sensory equipment included a full audio package. If they were as close as he thought...

There was the sound of something going SNAP, followed by a quietly spoken expletive.

In french.

Behin his mask, James' lips stretched backward, revealing teeth. It wasn't a friendly grin, or a particularly amused one.

Hate stirred. And anticipation.

There you are.

-

The patrol was further downhill as he'd assumed. The mercenary took note of equipment - the normally gunmetal gray of their armour here painted with what he recognized as the Gallian Army's tropical standard pattern, and they had the typical complement of a machinegunner and a marksman. The squad NCO was easily identifiable - he had a two gun drones quietly floating next to him.

James watched them carefully. Then followed as they walked past, always remaining just out of sight. They were doing a good enough job of moving around, but it was clear they weren't really used to the terrain - there were gaps in their cover habits, they were looking in the wrong places and the two teams often got separated by foliage.

And for the most part, several of them looked like they were... bored. They wouldn't be for much longer.

All he needed now was a vantage point and ground to retreat to.

Another few hundred metres of stalking, and he had what he needed - a rocky outcropping sticking out of the lip of the incline they'd been following. As the Gauls meandered past, he climbed it.

He didn't even bother taking up a good firing position. He just took aim, held his breath... and squeezed.

A long burst of gunfire ripped into the unwitting sergeant - James felt some satisfaction in walking the shots up the man's torso from behind, into the back of his head. He was dead before he could keel over - as he spun and tumbled to the ground, James could see the lower part of his face had been blown out from the other side of his head.

Confusion quickly gripped the rest of the Gallian squad, frantic contact reports were shouted, gunfire erupted in several directions, and nobody could quite seem to agree on where the enemy was, or from where they'd heard the gunfire. The two gun-drones went on automatic combat mode, their controller dead - they kept their head better than the living, but they were no more used to the terrain.
They simply gained altitude quickly, and scanned for thermal contacts... of which there were hundreds. They fired as randomly as the soldiers below.
James grew impatient, and lined up the machinegunner, who was busily reducing some nearby shrubbery to dust. James aimed high - bouncing one round off the man's shoulder guard - but landing another two in his throat. He staggered two steps, finger still on the trigger, and
fell gurgling to the ground. Calls for a medic ensued, but now the remaining troopers were beginning to get a sense of where they were being shot at from. Gunfire started raking the outcropping as the second fireteam pushed forward to assist, and the first team got a handle on where to shoot.

It was time to bolt. James got his head down, and began to pull backward, expending the rest of his magazine as he sent a third man sprawling. He was probably not dead, but that was fine.
James just needed the distraction - someone had started to try and drag the casualties to safety. They'd be bogged down with their wounded for some time while he made his escape.

The mercenary turned tail and bolted back into the greenery, gunfire still shredding the position he'd just left behind.

Now it was a matter of getting them to follow him to the place he had in mind.

-

Once well out of sight again, James paused, pressed himself against a tree, caught his breath.

He had over several weeks staked out suitable "playgrounds" in the jungle around the Gaul regiment's base.
These were places he had become intimately familiar with - memorizing notable features, hiding spots, solid cover. In addition, he'd placed little surprises in regular intervals in all of these areas.

Whatever he could think of - mines, snares, spikes, all manner of things that could cut, impale, mangle or explode a man, he had scattered haphazardly around anywhere he expected to make a stand.

Naturally, one such place was where he was leading the enemy right now.

He froze when he heard a faint, low-pitched repulsor hum buzz slowly by overhead. The two gun drones, retasked to track him, no doubt.

They hadn't seen him yet, but they would very soon.

JADE calmly proposed a solution to that problem.

"With the remote operator dead, I can subvert those units. One moment..."

A small indicator winked on James' HUD, status blips waiting to connect to a couple of drones.

He saw one of them suddenly halt mid-air - the other drone swung its pulse weapon around and reduced the companion to slag.

"JADE, what just happened?" James asked.

"I have encountered a failsafe. Apparently one drone recognized its compatriot as hostile before I could complete takeover of both units. I suspect it has to do with my lack of proper authorization codes when I slaved the drone to your suit system," she explained.

The survivor drone buzzed down next to the mercenary, idling.

"Well, at least I have one new pet drone. That ought to be useful. Have it transmit location data, one of the Gauls managed to retask it, meaning they probably have some means to keep track of it. It'll lead them right where we want them."

-

The "playground" James had in mind was a tranquil little slice of terrain with a depression that served well enough as cover. The approach to this position was rather unremarkable. Only a few scattered trees provided some small protection to attackers, who otherwise would be largely out in the open.

He hid there, in that small defilade for some time - testing the drone's camera feed, telling JADE the plan and how to use the drone.

The drone was left intentionally out in the open a small distance away from his position - a lure, to draw them in.

He saw them on the feed soon enough - the remaining seven men. They were angry, out for blood - advancing in an aggressive bound-and-cover.

He could hear one of them was trying to reassure the others with a mention of how they'd been in touch with their battalion, they would be getting some kind of support soon.

That didn't bode well.

He could tell they'd spotted the drone - they suddenly stopped talking, the video feed in his visor saw them halt, get down, use hand-signals. Their confusion with the drone was evident, why wasn't it responding to commands?

They had no more time to ponder that question, as two men were engulfed by an incendiary charge they'd gotten too close to, and all hell broke loose.

Fire from the initial explosion spread, and gunfire raked across most of the visible terrain features. The two men caught in the blast were still screaming, cooking alive as the burning adhesive stuck to clothes, flesh, equipment.

The rest had no time to worry about that - all they knew was that whoever was hunting them was here. As such, they kept firing - ammunition was not a concern - to try and flush him out.

They'd neglected the drone, however.

As bullets cracked overhead, James directed it to outflank and engage. It skimmed over and around the troopers, and with a bright flash reduced one of the remaining five men's torso to a steaming mess, before being driven off by the return fire.

Four left.