“This feels illegal,” Jennifer said for the fifth time as they sneaked through the airbase’s perimeter.
“And you sound like a narc,” Abe whispered back. “What laws are we breaking? We’re in no man’s land, and the troops stationed here abandoned this place a week ago.”
He shrugged. “Hell, by all accounts the entire base should have been empty. I asked around before we came out here, and it sounds like the breakdown of order hasn’t been kind to this place.”
“After the soldiers left, a bunch of toughs set up shop,” Abe continued, nodding toward the mostly dark buildings of the air force base. “As far as I can tell, they’re somewhere between a street gang and warlords. During the day, they make general menaces of themselves, feuding with rival groups and terrorizing the local community. At night, they come back here and get plastered.”
“All that aside, I’m still using a wire cutter on a chain link fence,” Jennifer replied, sarcasm dripping from her voice. “I really can’t think of a time when that was the start of a socially acceptable activity.”
Abe grinned, his teeth the only visible part of him in the dark. “Hey now! These are the bad guys. We’re basically doing everyone in this area a favor by removing them. Just think of us as Robin Hood.”
“Can you two cut the side chatter?” Dan murmured absently as he scanned the base through his binoculars. “William said that most of the 432nd Air Force Wing abandoned their post when the government broke down. They took some of the more portable stuff like the guns, ammunition, and gasoline, but there are a ton of drones left over. If we clear this place out, we have a bomber wing.”
“That’s why we’re just outside Vegas, then,” Jennifer quipped back. “I thought Abe tricked you into hiking out here with him so he could lose all of his paycheck in the casinos.”
Dan squinted at the two of them. “Seriously, can you shut up for a minute? The locals haven’t had anything good to say about the assholes holed up onsite. I’d prefer not to alert a bunch of bandits or looters that we’re here. Remember, we’re here to clear them out, land the Viceroy’s Pride, pick up the drones, and any salvage we can use and get out. We want to avoid a protracted fight if possible.”
“This is definitely illegal,” Jennifer snapped the wire cutter a final time, pinching her way through the fence surrounding the base. “I’m not against it, mind you, it’s just that there’s no way any activity following that little speech is on the up-and-up.”
With a jerk, Jennifer yanked the section of the fence that she’d cut free out and passed it back to Abe. Quietly, the three of them sneaked through the opening and into the base. In the distance, rock music blared from one of the hangers. Already, the grass leading up to the paths and runways of the base was beginning to overgrow a little, clearly having not seen a lawnmower in a good, long time.
Abe patted his shoulder. When Dan looked over to him, Abe tapped his eye and pointed out two people standing guard. Neither looked very attentive. One had an M-16 slung under his arm while he checked his phone, and the other seemed more concerned with the cigarette she was smoking than her surroundings.
Before Dan could say anything, Jennifer pointed out the woman then pointed at herself before scurrying away in a half crouch. He looked back to Abe, who shrugged helplessly. Rolling his eyes, Dan ran forward in a crouch toward the man on his phone, stopping periodically to hopefully ensure he wasn’t seen.
At about twenty feet away, Dan stepped on a broken beer bottle, the crunch of glass on asphalt barely audible over the thumping bass of the music. The guard fumbled his phone into his pocket before pulling out a flashlight, shining it vaguely in Dan’s general direction.
“Becky?” he called out, squinting his eyes against the darkness. “This isn’t fucking funny, man, where are you?”
Dan responded by shooting him in the throat with a Forcebolt. The blow knocked him over backward as the force of the attack more or less flipped him off of his feet. By the time Dan reached the guard, he was clutching his throat and making mute gasping motions as he flopped around like a dying fish.
He didn’t activate his sword, not wanting its purple light to give his position away. Instead, Dan planted his foot on the man’s chest, holding him in place as he slid the tip of his sword into his throat, silencing him forever. He barely even felt the trickle of mana from the man’s death.
Dan glanced up at the sound of a sneaker on pavement, only to relax from his ready stance when he made out Jennifer’s silhouette. Giving Dan a quick thumbs-up and smile, she faded from the darkness of the field surrounding the hangar, with Abe following her. Hopefully that meant her guard was taken care of, but given how close they were to the rest of the enemy camp, he didn’t dare voice his concern. Quickly, he shot her a query through the System, only for Jennifer to respond with another grin and a thumbs up.
It’d have to do.
Together, they sneaked toward the hangar. The massive doors lay open a crack, illuminating a line of the asphalt in flickering firelight. Inside, a crowd of about twenty men and women clustered around a bonfire. Most had bottles of domestic beer clutched in their hands, but at least one bottle of spirits was making its way around the circle. Away from the circle, another cluster of people danced, clearly drunk, to the music’s driving beat. In the corner, underneath one of the Reaper drones Dan was here to liberate, a couple made out, rounding second base and heading rapidly toward third.
Dan sent an alert via the system to Jennifer and Abe, drawing their attention as he held up three fingers. Then two.
He burst into the room, following a Fireball that exploded over the bonfire. Paradoxically, the pressure wave from the concussion more or less put the fire out, blasting the air away from the fire and scattering the coals all over the room. Dan did his best not to think of all of the explosives and jet fuel that the coals could be interacting with as he blurred in, whipping his sword out to take the arm off of a screaming man holding his hands over his face.
Taking the scene in, Dan let out a breath of relief. Most of the bodies strewn about the former bonfire were still moving, but none of them were wearing anything resembling uniforms. Instead, it was a collection of motorcycle leathers and shirts proclaiming the world tours of various bands. William might have claimed that the army had abandoned the base, but it was good to see at least some sort of visual confirmation, no matter how inconclusive.
A chain of force, extending from Abe’s outstretched hand, swung at knee level, knocking over the couple hooking up near the drone. He quickly followed up with a sword blow, hacking down on one of the burning figures trying to get itself to its feet.
Jennifer flowed in after Abe, moving with the grace of a dancer as she slipped invisible spikes of force into one enemy after another while Dan stood near the guttering remains of the fire, covering both of them. Of the team, he was the only one with ranged spells capable of killing any of the guards. Occasionally, one would start to their feet or reach for a gun, prompting a Lightning Stroke from Dan.
After about two minutes of moans and muffled thumps, there weren’t any survivors around the fire. Abe nodded at Dan, wiping his short sword off on the half-burnt shirt of the man he’d just finished off. Jennifer opened her mouth to make some sort of smart alec quip, only to be cut off by the sharp report of a handgun.
With a grunt, her eyes went wide and she spun forward, falling to her knees. Without thinking, Dan activated his temporal rune and pushed his body enhancement runes as far as they would go. Almost instantly, the heavy drain on his reserves coupled with pain all over his body, his flesh trying to keep up with the speeds his mana demanded of it.
He was a foot from Jennifer when he heard the second gunshot. Thanks to the temporal rune, he saw the incoming bullet ripping toward her. Barely. Extending his spellshield over Jennifer was an impossibility. Dan swung his sword, an awkward underhanded motion that contained barely any power, thinking only to cross the shortest distance between the position where he held the blade at rest and the oncoming slug without having to shift his grip.
The blade bucked in his hand, shooting off sparks as it barely nicked the slug, deflecting the bullet just enough to knock it high, clear of Jennifer. Then Dan was standing in front of her, his spellshield easily absorbing a half dozen bullets in quick succession.
Fire burned in his gut. Jennifer was down groaning, but still moving. Dan shifted his attention to the gunman, a thin figure, frantically reloading a handgun. He hit the man with a Lightning Stroke. Then another as he stalked forward. Finally, from a couple feet away, he launched two more strokes into him.
The spell wasn’t as efficient as Forcebolt, and it didn’t have the same splash damage as Fireball, but there was something satisfying about seeing his target buck and jerk as the current coursed through him. Even better, it wasn’t clean. The spell flashburned large chunks of the tall man’s body, covering him in burns that would easily kill him without hospitalization.
Somewhere, the part of Dan that was supposed to regulate his emotions during a mana rush screamed at him. This wasn’t him. When someone wronged him, he didn’t respond rashly, he buried it. He needed-
“Dan!” Abe called out. He was kneeling next to Jennifer, one hand pulling a flap of her uniform over her left shoulder aside while the other held a knife. “She’s more or less fine. That force plating she’s using as melee armor blunted most of it. She’s gonna have one hell of a bruise, and the System might need to patch up a broken bone, but it didn’t even break the skin.”
Dan unclenched his hands and relaxed his jaw. He’d had soldiers die under him, but this was different. They’d been new recruits or students, people he’d cared about, but they just weren’t as real as a member of his inner circle. He blew out a breath before putting the tip of his sword swiftly through the dying man’s throat.
He was an enemy, and he needed to be cleared out of the way before they could “liberate” the base, but there was no need to be a barbarian about it. Dan didn’t have a problem killing another person, he’d just prefer to do it quickly and cleanly. Already, he was a little upset with the ugly side of himself that had reared its head during the firefight.
“So…”
Dan turned around at Abe’s remark.
Abe had one of Jennifer’s arms over his shoulders as they walked toward Dan. “You can block bullets with a sword now.”
“That was one bullet, and it was mostly luck,” Dan smiled weakly. “I blocked the rest with my torso. Much more reliable.”
“I’m looking for a chair,” Jennifer said as she walked past them toward a lit office attached to the side of the hanger, her voice unnaturally tight from pain. “Every breath hurts, and I really need to sit down. Feel free to give Daddy the call.”
“So, did we get them all?” Dan turned to Abe.
“Yep,” Abe replied, surveying the hanger. “All the looters are down as far as I can tell, and better yet, it looks like they didn’t get around to fiddling with the Reapers. I don’t know if we’ll be able to load up a full six squadrons worth of attack drones and hellfire missiles into the Viceroy, but we’ll be able to field a large enough contingent to ruin the day of the next asshole we have to fight.”
“You know,” Dan replied. “Jennifer might have had a point. You just called the group we took out looters, but as far as I can tell, that’s what we’re doing. I really don’t see too much of an ethical difference here.”
“That’s a simple one, Boss,” Abe’s easy smile crawled across his face. “We’re the good guys.”
