10 Standard Combat Units

You walk along a beam, balancing your way across it. Below is normal ground but you don't want to risk it.

The place is abandoned, like everything else. Concrete, wet, dank and dusty.

Inside you know that there are several left over sounding devices.

They are pretty valuable and well, indispensable to you, a lowly independent operator.

You're referred to as a Marauder by the companies.

But really, who has a right over the Island really?

They lay claim to it, but they're still fighting over it.

Anyways.

You're not cut out to extract. Fuck that, yeh its lots of money but ending up in the Abyss. No way.

But others like to pay for information.

The Sounding gadgets would alert the companies to breaches in tunnels and caverns. Then they would send an extraction party to get the Zog and the Dark.

Something went down here a few months back and nothing got picked up and nothing got extracted.

Just a big messy fight over the territory. The companies call it a skirm.

It is what it is, no soft corporate language, it was a slaughter.

One team in Black, the other team in Red shot each other until all of one side was laying on the ground.

In this instance apparently both totalled each other to next to nothing and pulled back.

I walk through and there is guns strewn everywhere. BF ABRs and some ZX4s. I wish I had a little pull cart, or a buggy. There must be 30 plus rifles on the ground.

All the bodies are gone, there are some belts and stuff.

Zog must have got them.

Zog retracted so I better stay quiet otherwise its going to come for me. I don't wear heels to signal I'm hear, I'm not stupid.

That's the rumour, they wear heels to bait zog.

Sounders are nearby, they're flat which is good. I mean what would keep its charge for 18 months?

There is a proxy sensor near it. Its beeping. I thought they'd give up on this territory.

Ill see who comes, hopefully its just a couple of techs or something I can blast away.

But no, I hear heels, lots of heels. Running.

Standards, I know it. They come fast too.

I for all they know could be a large force. But no care in the world

They just break the corner and open fire.

I got a Modified BDR that most of them would be too young to have even seen.

So I just through a auto spray at them. Spray and pray

and what do you know. One takes it straight to the chest and I break away and run for it.

Im a fast runner and they are falling behind. I get the distance and the faster ones break away from the slower ones.

Running, running, running. They're damn fit these girls.

There is a good 30 or 40 yard gap between the fast ones and the slower ones.

One is out in front, a young one along with a taller one.

I come to a corner, turn and wait.

They run straight around that corner and meet my barrel.

I baste them good and run for it. The others take the corner more carefully seeing the other two on the ground.

I get back to my vehicle and break for it.

Im exhausted, with less ammo and no sensors.

Atleast I took three standards out.