Mari had landed the dropship on the flattened top of a ridge. Below them stretched the small town of Verdania, and beyond it, the teeming life and noise of equatorial jungle. He could already feel himself starting to sweat from the heat as he fell into a loose formation with the other members of his team. A guard for the shuttleport spoke briefly to Sergeant Lee, who was at the front, but Thorn couldn’t make out the words.
Thorn and Lief followed directly behind the Sergeant, and behind them were Rigs and Kels in their armor, bringing up the rear. Sedge floated off to their left, the dull red flames blowing out of his lower calves tuned down to a low burn. Mari took up a spot in the air on their right flank. She was wearing a thick piece of machine tech around her torso with wind turbines and what Thorn swore had to be extendable wings.
The Crows walked (and flew) down the sets of switchbacks carved into the side of the valley, descending several hundred feet to the floor of the jungle and the entrance to the town proper.
Verdania could not be called a city; it was too small. Thorn estimated at least five of his village could have fit inside the perimeter walls of the town, which gave the city a population of ten thousand or more. Like all Agrarian Guild settlements, it was set up in an orderly, prescribed fashion with wide thoroughfares running north-south and east-west. Individual neighborhoods were multi-use zones, with apartments, stores, and schools situated directly next to greenhouses, processing centers, and warehouses.
What Thorn did not see were any of the farms, pastures, or other areas of mass agricultural production that he’d grown up with. According to the briefing notes from Sergeant Lee, this city’s primary outputs were tourism and research, with a focus on the jungle around them as a source of new botanicals and organic compounds. The team didn’t have to walk far to reach the Agrarian Guild’s administrative building, but they still drew quite a few stares from the locals up early and hustling to work. And Thorn didn’t blame them. He had to give it to his team; they knew how to make an entrance.
The admin building was a plain, non-descript three story sprawled at the northern end of the town. Sedge and Mari touched down and the team pulled in tight as they swept through the double doors into the much, much cooler and darker interior. A bubbling fountain sat in the center of the lobby, with chairs and benches where visitors sat and waited for their appointments.
“Wait here while I meet with the Patrician in charge of the town,” Sergeant Lee said, handing a slim pack off to Rigs. Thorn noticed she appeared to be empty-handed, and he had a moment of concern.
“Did you bring an introductory gift for the Patrician?”
Sergeant paused, turned and looked at him with narrowed eyes. “No, I did not.”
“It’s common practice.” Thorn cleared his throat. “The higher-ups like Patricians generally expect it.”
Thorn almost said “stuck-ups” instead of higher-ups, but he wasn’t a sulking twelve-year-old anymore.
“They won’t expect outside people to follow their customs, but Thorn has a point,” Lief added.
“It would have been better to bring this up in pre-mission briefing.”
Sergeant Lee was correct. He should have mentioned it in the briefing. At least he’d bought a few extra things when he’d swung by Stellar Eats for the bacon.
He slung off his pack and dug into the top, pulling out a box of tea. It was actually really good stuff, a first cutting from one of the best tea-growing areas on the planet, and he’d splurged on it because for the first time in his life, he was rolling in the quints. He briefly mourned the fact that he would still have the instant caf in his pack to make for Lief when out on patrol, but not the tea he’d gotten for himself.
“Take this. It’s the good stuff.” He held the box of tea out with both hands and offered it with a shallow bow to a skeptical Sergeant Lee. “Like this. And say something stupid, like ‘this is an insignificant token in consideration of our future relationship,’ or ‘this plain tea is a small item in comparison to your time. Something fake-humble and flowery at the same time.”
“Fake humble?” Sergeant Lee asked with a raised eyebrow. “Flowery? You might be asking too much of a simple merc.” Lief laughed.
“I don’t know. That’s what it sounds like to me.” Thorn resisted the urge to roll his eyes.
He settled in to wait with the rest of the team as Sergeant Lee went to check in with the client for their mission. He sat down on a bench opposite Sedge and Mari. Sedge closed his eyes, and quite possibly fell asleep within seconds. Mari’s eyes were hidden beneath her helmet. Kels and Rigs, suited up in their full armor, stood in the open area, forming a loose circle. No one seemed to be in a talkative mood, or if they were, they were using System comms.
Minutes stretched by as they waited. Town residents came and went on their business, some taking tickets and sitting down, others moving into the interior hallways. Thorn was growing bored when there was a slight commotion as Korakis gave out a few low tok, toks.
Another armed group, weapons slung over shoulders and wearing dark black fatigues, sauntered into the lobby and posted up next to the fountain. They chatted and joked amongst themselves, pointing at Thorn and his team.
This must be the competition, Thorn surmised. A typical move by a scheming Patrician: calling in your competing contractors for back-to-back meetings and having them share the same lobby while they waited. They liked to play power games like that.
Thorn couldn’t help but compare the group of Red Hand mercenaries to the Crows, and come away feeling like he was on the winning team. The Red Hand group all had similar uniforms and loadouts, with only small variations; they were likely all using the same System, or very similar Systems. Automatic rifles, sidearms, a bulky augment on the left forearm and heavy torso armor.
Similar to Mari’s armor, these guys also had small turbines embedded in the back of their armor, but the quality of the machine tech looked a step down; likely mass-produced, instead of custom-fitted. Overall, the Red Hands had much more consistent and comparable tech, Systems and loadouts, but of a lower overall quality and most likely, power level.
One of the other mercenaries had taken his helmet off and was making jokes to the others’ growing laughter. He was mostly bald except for a bit of reddish stubble around the edges.
Baldy began strutting, making flapping gestures and cawing noises. There were quite a few glances over at Korakis and Thorn as they sniggered.
“Crrrrk grkkk.”
The other group had heard Korakis though and saw that as an invitation to address them.
“Look at the crow,” Baldy said, pitching his voice louder. “The Crows are so desperate for recruits they’re out there recruiting actual birds now.”
Kels shifted her weight and caught Thorn’s eye.
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Thorn knew that responding directly was a mistake, but he also just didn’t want to sit back and suffer the fools trying to get a rise out of him. He couldn’t respond with force, or with an argument, or another insult, but they viewed him and Korakis as the weak links. Someone they could pick on.
If he couldn’t show strength, well, there was another option he’d resorted to before, and it was harmless and might be fun to do here. The streets of Aba didn’t pick on the strong… but neither did they pick on the crazy.
“Cawrrr,” Thorn said softly at first, staring Baldy directly in the eyes.
“Crkkz,” Korakis replied, puzzled.
“Crrrkk,” Thorn said again, a bit louder, maintaining eye contact with Baldy. He was making raven-like sounds, pretending to speak to Korakis out loud, but Korakis wasn’t having it. He pecked him on the side of the neck angrily.
“Hzzzrk.”
Thorn reached into his pack and pulled out another box he’d gotten the night before on his second meeting with Jemison. This one was dotted with many small holes to allow air inside.
He opened the box slowly and pulled out two small, squirming bugs. The other mercenary squad, as well as Kels and Rigs, all watched in mute fascination, and then disgust, as he fed the first grub to Korakis and popped the second into his own mouth. He kept his mouth open as he squished the soft, juicy grub between his teeth.
“What the hell, man,” Baldy said in disgust.
Lief put out his hand, and Thorn gave him a grub to eat too.
“Oh man,” Lief said, chomping down. “You brought the good stuff.”
Thorn crooned a soft “tok, tok” at Korakis while petting the back of his head.
“Crrk, crk.” Korakis said angrily.
Thorn fed him one more grub and put the package away.
The other mercenary group lost their interest in them. Baldy looked slightly green around the edges, as did Kels. Rigs, though, was barely suppressing a grin and gave him a hidden thumbs up. Thorn gave him a quick wink when no one else was looking at him, and that got a snort out of the big man.
Minutes passed. Thorn decided to take a cue from Sedge and closed his eyes, pretending to sleep. Instead, he used Agent Map to survey the people in the room.
When Sergeant Lee finally returned, they had been waiting for over an hour. Was this the mercenary life? Hurrying up to wait somewhere that was so boring you had to eat insects to entertain yourself?
“Let’s go,” Sergeant Lee said.
At least Thorn had been productive during his Meditate session, sucking in a few handfuls of quints. He’d also discovered something useful about the opposing group of mercenaries.
Thorn supposed the stealthed figure could be from another group, but who? And how would he tell? After exiting the admin building, Sergeant Lee gave them more discrete orders.
“The mission is on, same as we planned, except a bit behind schedule. We can thank Recruit Farmer for that… I learned more about the proper cultivation of tea in the last hour than I wanted to learn in my lifetime.”
Sergeant Lee frowned at Thorn.
“The man wouldn’t stop talking. We drank two pots of the stuff. And I’m to have tea with him again tomorrow afternoon.”
Thorn gave her a thumbs up. She shook her head in mock despair.
“It was a singularly painful experience but I can’t say it wasn’t a good outcome. And especially for Thorn and Lief, since all the rest of the team has heard me say this numerous times, but the most important thing we need to establish is informational superiority.”
For the most important thing, Thorn might have picked “quints” (he certainly knew Korakis would have), or maybe, coming from the Sergeant, “safety.” But he supposed knowing more than anyone else was important too.
“Farmer, Mejer, and Mari, you’re on patrol duty. The rest of you are with me visiting warehouses. Good hunting.”
Thorn followed Kels and Mari as they headed south through the town. They had discussed their patrol routes during the briefing last night, and while they started and ended in Verdania, the majority of the paths stretched through kilometers of jungle. Similarly to how Lief had cultivated mushrooms in the forest south of Aba, the AG was cultivating rare plants at sites throughout the jungle.
Certain types of crops were easily grown in carefully tended greenhouses, but Thorn knew that others more rare and valuable grew better in the wild. Something about the struggle inherent in a natural environment activating the right evolutionary genes.
The streets that the mercenaries walked down were quiet. It was mid-morning and vehicle traffic was minimal. The few people they saw on the sidewalks immediately ducked their heads and ran into a building or turned down another street.
Mari was extra grouchy because the Sergeant hadn’t let her operate a vehicle for their regular patrols. A waste of quints for an aerial vehicle, and too difficult a terrain for most ground vehicles. They needed to move through the jungle quietly, hunting and stalking beasts, not blaze trails and destroy the AG’s resources.
When a mission involved the hunting of beasts, there was obviously the question of loot. There were several ways that cores and other beast parts could be split fairly under their contract, but the overall philosophy of the Crows Guild was very simple: you keep what you kill. Sergeant Lee had decided that any cores from beasts would belong to those who hunted them, but she would keep things fair by rotating the members of the team so that everyone had an equal amount of opportunity.
That meant that when they exited the town and entered the jungle path, Thorn and Korakis were all business. Hunting was something that both of them were familiar with and excited about.
Thorn tried to move to the front of their group, but Mari held up a hand. Korakis took off and disappeared into the upper canopy.
“I’ll take point,” Mari said. “Tell your bird to stay close and not spook any of the beasts that we may come across.”
Thorn wasn’t sure how to respond. She was a higher rank and ostensibly in charge of their little group, but based on all of the standard tactics he’d been reading about how the Crows operated, he, with the scout abilities and hunting experience, was supposed to take the lead.
“Okay,” he said, deciding not to push it. He had somehow gotten off on a bad foot with the woman, and he wasn’t sure how to fix that. They continued forward, following the path for now. They had to hit twenty-one points of interest today, covering seven kilometers through the jungle, and while there were paths that the AG members used to check on and harvest their crops in the jungle, they wouldn’t stick to the same path for the whole day.
He did not tell Korakis to stay close. As a matter of fact, he encouraged him to do the opposite. They were on a patrol, out in the jungle, and if they killed any beasts, they got to keep the cores. Stay close? Absolutely not.
He pulled up a heat map of quintessence signatures, using Agent K-Vision to process the data coming in from Korakis. The jungle was teeming with life, and thus quintessence. It was a tremendous amount of detail, but he filtered through until he had a decent picture of the surrounding area.
As they marched down the path, Korakis ranged to the east and west. They covered a few kilometers without seeing a sign of any beasts in the area, and Korakis began to range farther afield.
Mari still led from the front. Thorn had slowed down to walk with Kels, who had stumped along behind them, bringing up the rear. Her tech armor, while impressive and envy-inducing, was going to limit their maneuverability through the jungle. It was also noisy.
“Your armor is awesome, by the way,” Thorn told her as they walked down the path, trying to strike up a conversation. “You have no idea how jealous I am.”
“Hah,” Kels said. Her faceplate was down, and Thorn could see the sweat dripping down her face. “It’s pretty sick, not gonna lie, but it’s not all kick-ass smashing and grabbing.”
“Oh, so you’re more of a, long walks in the jungle riding inside your climate-controlled armor, type of merc?” Thorn smirked.
“Smart-ass.” She grinned. “You can see the sweat dripping down my face. I’m getting a workout here! If I wasted all my quints on stupid stuff like full motor assist and heat regulation, I’d be out of quints faster than you can say ‘beast core.’ Besides, if you saw my maintenance bills, you wouldn’t be jealous anymore either.”
“Costs a lot to keep up, huh,” Thorn said.
“You’ve got no idea.” Kels shook her head.
“Can’t ever have enough quints,” Thorn mused.
“You’re not wrong.”
“Do you know how many cores it takes to keep Korakis in a good mood? You’ve got no idea.”
Kels snorted. “Well, if you put it that way… tech armor or a bird that pecks me in the face? I might start feeling sorry for you.”
“Hang on,” Thorn said. He stopped walking and focused on his HUD. He sent a comm to Korakis but, as expected, didn’t get a response. Korakis rarely sent comms. He checked his K-Vision again to confirm.
“I have a possible hit on a beast. It’s several klicks southwest and moving quickly in our direction.”