Together, their few surviving men behind them, they set off to hunt a ghost.
Sergeant Drachan wiped the grease off his fingers.
It was time to go again.
They were coming for him, he could smell them.
Time to kill, and kill, and kill again.
He was Guard.
This was what he was for.
Cully led his squad through the drenched, reeking green. They were doubled up with Three Section, following Gesht and those of Two Section who had gone with her.
Drachan was a master scout, silent as a ghost and deadly as a shark. No one else in Alpha Platoon could hope to match him for stealth.
So they didn’t even try.
Every sound, every flicker of movement, earned a burst of full auto.
Overkill. Anykill.
Kill, kill, kill.
Moonface kicked the body of the indigenous simian he had just blown apart, and cursed.
‘I don’t get it, corporal,’ he said. ‘Shooting at everything like this. He’ll hear us.’
‘He can hear us breathing, you stupid sodding boot,’ Cully snapped at the boy. ‘Drachan was – is – the most dangerous man in Alpha Platoon. There’s no sneaking up on him, my lad. We’ve just got to–’
‘Blood and fire!’ Rachain roared, blasting away into the trees on a furious rampage of full auto until he drained his lasgun’s power-pack to empty.
His finger stayed clamped down on the trigger even then, the weapon clicking empty in his hands in impotent desperation.
Cully raced towards the sergeant’s position, stopped short when he saw what had provoked Rachain’s outburst.
Dannecker was down, his throat hacked out by a heavy knife.
‘He was right behind me,’ Rachain cursed, ‘and I never heard anything!’
Strongarm hurled a grenade into the trees, throwing up a great fireball of shattered branches and pulped vegetation. Somewhere in the green, someone laughed.
Cully’s blood ran cold.
There was nothing sane in that laugh, nothing human any more.
‘Drachan,’ he whispered.
Rachain nodded.
‘That way,’ he said.
Steeleye heard the laugh.
That was Drachan’s mistake. His one and only and final mistake.
Drachan is the most dangerous man in Alpha Platoon, Cully had told Moonface. Steeleye hadn’t heard that conversation of course, didn’t hear about it until much later, but she wouldn’t have cared anyway even if she had. He was probably right, looking back on it, but Steeleye wasn’t a man and she knew exactly what she could do.
She was already up a tree, the custom long-las held tight to her shoulder and her bulbous, augmetic eye snugly interfaced with the scope. It clicked as the bezel rotated in her face, dialling from night vision to the heat spectrum.
The steaming jungle showed as a livid background of green and red. The simians that swarmed in the canopy were flashes of yellow as they moved.
There.
The bright white patch of human heat, moving oh so quietly through cover, deep in the undergrowth a hundred yards off Two Section’s position.
Drachan.
Steeleye took a breath, lined up on the shot, ignored the hot rain that fell relentlessly across her back and shoulders. Data scrolled across the scope and into her eye.
Range, obstructions, refraction index, diffusion potential.
This would probably be her one and only opportunity, she knew.
Better safe than sorry.
She pushed her hotshot charge up to absolute maximum, a whole power-pack discharged in a single furious shot. Released half her held breath. The crosshairs flashed red in the scope as the heavily customised rifle made guaranteed target lock.
