C10 Operation Firestarter 7

By N00813

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  I am not a killer.

  I am not a killer.

  I am not a killer.

  The mantra bounced off the walls of her mind.  It was futile.

  Maybe if I repeat it enough, I’ll start believing it.

  Dust scowled, shaking her head.  The wind burned in her eyes, and she felt the screaming, violent need to just close her eyes to the world and shut down.  Her eyelids slammed shut –

  Get a grip or die here.

  Tricks’ words exploded into her ears, and then her inner ear screamed for her to pull up, pull up –

  With a hasty flutter or her wings, she gasped, eyes snapping wide open.  The ground, just a few centimetres in front of her eyes, was braided with roots the thickness of her hooves.  A hiss, just up ahead, sucked the blood from her face and she looked up in terror –

  Gilda’s camouflaging had somehow made her white head blend in with the dark, murky-green forest.  Stripes of bloody-white hung off of her form, like opaque sunshafts.  They twisted and turned unnaturally as the body they were attached to slunk off into the jungle.

  Dust snapped her wings back until they lay flat against her back.  The jungle’s vines and branches seemed to close in, the shadows reaching for her form as spindly black claws.  Suddenly, the warm, humid Haysead felt like a freezer.

  She hurried after Gilda’s retreating form.

-----

  Rolk’s brows furrowed as he ran.

  This wasn’t the worst fuck-up they’d – or he’d – ever had.  In fact, this probably didn’t make it into the top ten.  Dust’s reaction to getting her murder cherry popped was a bit more than he’d thought, though.  Tricks’ reaction hadn’t been that bad.

  Not that that’s much difference from what she’s usually like.

  The tree branches made for an odd obstacle course, a detached part of him noted.  He leapt for a thicker limb sticking out at about two metres higher than he was.  A short flap, and his claws and paws met the wood for the barest split-second, before he launched off again.

  Spring…

  He narrowed his eyes.

  Sunlight stabbed through the holes in the canopy, lighting the forest floor with shafts of whitish-yellow light.  Dust particles hung in the air, spiralling through the beams as they danced.

  He hurtled past.

-----

  Tricks settled down beneath an overhanging mesh of moss and leaves.  She drew her cloak around her form, and it shimmered with the faintest hint of white-blue before mixing into the shade of her surroundings.  She raised a hoof, watching the light patterns splay across it as if it was glass instead of flesh, and smiled.

  “Ready,” she whispered, pressing her form into the soil.  The stale, heavy odour of decomposition stung her nostrils, but she ignored it.  Turning her head, she could just make out the mass of shadows that was Gilda, behind a piece of foliage just up from her position.  Rolk was just gone – typical, really.

  As it turned out, they didn’t have to wait long.

  The convoy rumbled into view.  A shorter, wiry dog led the group – presumably a scout – and behind him, a burly rock hound tugged on a chain.  Guards surrounded the slave chain, all dogs with cheap leather armour, speckled here and there with pieces of metal.  Attached to the links in regular spaces were chunky, rusty collars that were fastened around the necks of several motley earth ponies and pegasi.  Many of them looked to be in shock.  Some were sobbing soundlessly, and others simply trudged along in resignation.  Even through the gloom, she could see that the metal collars were stained brown with blood.

  “Ready to initiate,” Rolk hissed through the comms.

  Something deep inside Tricks stirred.  She ignored it, focusing on the spell in the gem.  A spark to set the timer, a toss with her horn, and as the gem tumbled through the air with a trail of sparkles behind it, she wove another spell into her horn.

  A sound of thunder, and then the big dog’s head exploded into strips of flesh, coating the slaves behind in a spray of gore.  Rolk’s signal.

  Tricks’ spell sparked out, and blue circles drew themselves into existence above the dogs’ frozen bodies.  Almost simultaneously, smoke poured out from the ground, filling the space with a blinding, grey-blue miasma.

  She grinned, blood pounding in her ears.

  Another thunderclap from her side, and one of the circles winked out of existence.

  Tricks shook her head, mumbled a quick phrase for luck and wove a new spell.  Even as she dived into the coiling fog, orange silhouettes flickered into existence before her eyes.  Several large outlines, crisscrossed in the middle by orange contours, swung around in the fog at random.  Their arms were lengthened by thin, unnaturally straight lines – spears.  In the middle, a mass of orange squirmed like fireflies trapped in translucent slime.  Now and then, some appendage unfolded, and Tricks could see hanging chain links leading from the end into the mass.

  Another thunderclap.  An orange figure tumbled onto its knees, before falling chest-down onto the ground minus its head.

  Tricks ignored the pitter-patter of airborne blood droplets on her cloak.  Just a few metres more…

  Gilda’s form, bulky and yet oddly graceful, peeled off from the orange mass, and Tricks saw a train of ponies trailing behind as the griffon hen wrenched on the chain.  Some bodies were moving, but others dragged their hooves, even as they stumbled and their faces met dust – probably think we’re slavers too – and Tricks turned back to the mass and remembered her goal.

  Dust was overhead, hovering like an unwieldy orange vulture.  Tricks looked back down, and realised that she’d gotten so close that the mass’s mesh had darkened into specific shapes, resembling heads and legs…

  She toned down the setting, and the mesh thinned until she could see the many eyes staring back at her, all different colours and set on a multitude of hungry, hopeful faces.

  She could feel her own face settling into an odd half-smile.  Huh.  Looked like years of mercenary work still hadn’t shorn away all of her dignity.

  She tapped the one closest to her, and as his eyes swivelled up to focus on hers, squinting, a spark of yellow light sprang into existence in the shape of a cross – the pony symbol for healing.

  She suppressed a smirk at the irony as she turned away, the cross hanging in mid-air behind her.  The shuffling of steel and flesh behind her mixed into a dulled rumble as she picked her way towards Gilda’s form.

-----

  Dust hovered high above.

  Her turquoise wings beat at the air, a steady whump-whump that drew her mind towards her goal and away from the errant thoughts swirling around her consciousness.

  This was a performance.  There could be no interruptions – the show had to go on, regardless of everything.  That was her downfall, five years ago – and it was her salvation here, in this jungle.

  A dog stumbled out of the gloom, his stance low and balanced, a solid wooden crossbow in his paws.  Just by chance, he’d turned – and all it took was one split-second before he was raising the stock to shoulder height, his finger tightening on the trigger all the while.

  Dust swerved on instinct.  Corkscrew turn.  The dog hadn’t the time to aim his weapon, and the bolt cannoned by, a silver sliver of lethal steel mere inches from her torso – but it was way, way too close.

  The dog didn’t have a chance to correct his error, however.  A sound of thunder, and his head exploded into red chunks, showering the surrounding earth with crimson mist.  Blood gushed out even as he fell onto his back, like a broken ragdoll.

  Rolk’s lethally accurate sniper fire was demonstrated to her once more.

  If I’d ever tried to leave, just desert or help the enemy or whatever, he could just put a bullet through my head.  I wouldn’t even be able to go two metres.

  She shivered, the spasm travelling to the tips of her wings, and she fell slightly before recovering into a stable position.

  Perform.

   Dust turned, angling her wings until she was above the mass of miasma and then propelled herself, hard into a loop.  At the azimuth, she braked into a hover, wings flaring.  A quick twist and she’d tilted her body downwards, her nose being the tip of a biological lightning bolt.

  The blackish-brown lumps that were Gilda and Tricks led two separate slave trains out of the grey, and Dust grinned sincerely for what seemed like the first time since the day had started – at least some ponies would get the chance to lead happier lives.  She was helping.

  The smile washed off her face as another dog stepped out, arms swinging, the spear drawing figure-of-eights in the air.  One of her teammates raised a limb, and Dust saw the glint of amber eyes as cold and hard as the stone itself before a crossbow bolt buried itself into the dog’s head.

  The crossbow…

  Her eyes widened, and she slapped herself – stupid, stupid! – before swooping downwards towards the body, lying on its back with its head missing.  The miasma hung unnaturally still, never straying past its circular boundary even as the mists roiled.  Her hooves hit wet dirt, and on instinct she reared up, settling into a low hover as she lifted her forelegs.

  Red blood coated the hooves from the hard, bony surface to the top of the fetlock.  The symbolism wasn’t lost on her.

  Her face twisted in disgust, but she didn’t stop.  The crossbow’s hard wooden stock was slick with the blood and bits of skull that also belonged to its former owner.  After brushing the wood with what dry parts of her foreleg she could find, she slung the weapon across her shoulders, in between her wings, and turned the body over.  She didn’t dare let her eyes stray above the collarbone – the lack of anything above still seemed so wrong.

  Seven crossbow bolts spilled onto the red earth, each of which she grabbed and put into the myriad pockets on her armour.

  “Careful with the weapon, Dust,” Rolk’s voice sounded out over her earpiece.  “No one wants friendly fire.”

  No one wants to be shot at, she thought, whether them or us.

  She took a quick glance at the mechanisms.  It was ridiculous.  She knew she was looking at a cheap piece of kit, but even then, strings seemed to lead everywhere and nowhere, and little gears stuck out near the rough curve of the trigger.  Her brilliant plan had decayed into nothing.

  This happens to me a lot, doesn’t it.

  With a sigh, she swung the thing over her back, flinching as one of the bits smacked into her wing.  Just as well it wasn’t loaded.  Losing a wing on her first mission – her first performance – would just be her luck.

  Her knife gripped in a hoof, she flapped her wings hard, jetting into the air above the fog.

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