C9 Operation Firestarter 6

By N00813

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  Tricks had finished with her work by the time Dust’s sobs had calmed into little putt-putts that echoed out over the desert of her earpiece.  No one else had spoken anything – Gilda had grunted into the comms with each scream that she could hear emanating from the smog, but other than that, everyone let Dust recuperate in silence.

  The tunnel looked no different than before to her eyes.  Her horn was far more suited to sensing traps of this nature, however.  Errant ley wound around the tunnel walls and floor, ready to trigger the explosives she’d buried in the floor.  It wasn’t too different from the stage tricks she’d set up when she’d worked as a travelling magician.  The fireworks were packed with more actual explosive, and shrapnel rather than confetti, whilst the trigger was set to be a lot more delicate than anything she’d dare get close to.  But she could handle her bombs from a distance.

  The dogs, lacking in any sort of conscious magic, wouldn’t be able to sense them until it was too late.

  “Bust the screen,” Gilda muttered, and Tricks dispelled the spell.  The smoke faded into the air.

  There had been fifteen or so dogs at the beginning of the op.  There were fifteen or so dog corpses at the end.

  Rolk sighed, his voice layered with static.  Tricks could almost taste the annoyance in his words.  “Take what we can.  See if the slavers have anything on them – information, scraps of parchment, whatever.  Spring, hold position.”

  Tricks had almost forgotten about Spring.  Granted, the earth mare never did much besides pull the wagon, carry hefty loads and sit quietly away from them.  She had seemed like a nice type when Tricks had talked to her, a long time ago – friendly, quiet and awkward – but she’d never seemed quite right next to Tricks, and the feeling was mutual.

  She shook the thoughts out of her head, and strands of her silver mane wafted in front of her eyes.  She blew them away, before turning to Gilda.  In the quiet, every clink and scrape of the Gilda’s odd armour was as loud as thunder.

  I’ve always wondered why she chooses those overlapping plates instead of something solid like a breastplate.  With that, a single swipe at the right angle can knock the metal right off, and then she would have nothing.

  Gilda was drenched in gore.  Loose curls of meat hung from her machete, which she’d strapped to her chest.  She stopped, and Tricks watched with morbid curiosity as the blood dripping off her feathers turned the sand below her red.

  “What are you lookin’ at,” Gilda said, raising her head and looking Tricks in the eye.

  “You, moron,” Tricks replied.

  A pause, ugly and pregnant, grew in between the two.  Gilda’s eyes narrowed just the tiniest bit, before the two of them burst out into simultaneous chuckles.

  I would have been scared shitless just a few years ago.  Things change, huh?

  Rolk’s voice cut in through the dying sounds of their merriment.  “Get to work.”

  Both of them acknowledged him, and with a nod at one another, split up to begin their work.

  Tricks walked around the side of the encampment.  There was less gore on the ground here, and the occasional squelch as she stepped in sticky red sand drew a frown from her lips.  The smell of blood had been a common enough presence in her life since she’d started her work, but blood was still blood, and getting it out of her cloak was going to be a pain.

  Still, at least it wasn’t going to like suffering as bad as a wound as the dog in front of her.  He’d been stabbed in the back, the blade going clean in-between the ribs and cleaving the heart in two.  It was a mortal wound, but by no means one that would kill instantly.  He’d had time to reflect on his life as he bled out into the soil.

  She turned the corpse over, rifling through his pockets, and came up with nothing but a few gems.  There was no power in them, although they were worth a fair bit of money to the right people.

  Nothing else but that.  She moved on, trotting around towards the next body.  The head was non-existent, with only a few curls of flesh spreading out from the neck like the tentacles of an octopus.  Bits of gore littered the area around him.  That made sense – when his head was blown apart, the brain and skull had to go somewhere.  It wasn’t like they vanished into mid-air.

  She rifled through the pockets, finding nothing but another clutch of gems.

  The next body already had a mare looking over it.  Dust was clutching herself, her knife lying inside the throat of the dog she’d killed.  There was a patch of whitish, green-yellow liquid on the sand beside her.  Vomit.

  Standard stuff.  She’ll be over it in a couple of days.

  Tricks trotted up to her, and Dust’s eyes snapped up to face the unicorn’s own magenta pools.  Her amber ones were wide, twitching and unfocused, and for a second Tricks thought she’d been possessed, until Dust’s voice cracked the almost-silence.

  “Fuck…” she whispered, alternating between Tricks and her own hooves.

  Tricks nodded.  Indeed.  That must have been a painful death.  Look at the cut!  Horrible technique!  She scanned the body.  There was nothing of note in the two pockets on the front – not surprising.  The corpse belonged to some dog just out of his teen years.  Too bad he fell in with the wrong people.

  Tricks stepped over the body until she was on the same side as Dust.  The latter still hadn’t moved a muscle, even as her eyelids were sweeping up and down in sync with her rapid breaths.

  Tricks sighed, before grasping Dust’s shoulders with her own hooves.  Amber eyes met magenta ones, and Tricks’ face contorted into a snarl as she beheld her partner’s witless, all-consuming fear and horror.  Not the time for moralising now.

  A shred of confusion flickered across Dust’s face, before terror, keen and hungry, once again consumed her.  She didn’t speak, but chose simply to flap her mouth open and closed.

  “Get a grip or die here with him,” Tricks growled, shoving Dust away from the dog’s body.  Her own hooves were damp, and she could feel liquid, viscous and hot, pool around them as they sank almost imperceptibly into the soil.  “And that would be a shame.”

  Anger crossed Dust’s turquoise face, but gave way to simple, mute horror and disgust.  Her face creased, and Tricks groaned internally.  She could remember that face – she’d made it herself, just a few short years ago.  Disgusting, but at least this will only happen once.

  Dust’s vomit splashed out onto the ground, a white-green mix of stomach acid and greenery that had been mixed into a mush not unlike pulverised brain.  Tricks looked on, one eyebrow raised, before a hiss in her ear yanked her head around.

  “Caravan coming,” a voice – too high to be Gilda, too feminine to be Rolk, and Dust’s still gaping like a goldfish – Spring! – came over the earpiece, and she frowned.  Spring usually wasn’t a combatant – that had been made very clear to her in her first few months – so she usually kept quiet.  It was an arrangement that worked for all of them.  The less interference on the line, the more effective their communication, and so the more efficient they would be at their jobs.

  Spring piping up, however, meant a change of plans.

  She could distinguish Rolk’s sharp intake of breath over the network.  “Spring!  I’ll be there,” he muttered, the little growl in it painfully obvious to her.

  Tricks glanced once more at Dust.  The pegasus had finally stopped hyperventilating, and now she simply sat on the dirt, her head staring at her bloody hooves.

  “Team, form up.  Ambush convoy.”  Rolk’s order sounded somewhat off to Tricks, even as she glanced over to Gilda.  They met gazes, and Gilda gave a short, sharp nod.  Professional.  Tricks reciprocated with one of her own.

  She sighed, and began to trot towards the forest, her hooves pounding against the sand with soft, repetitive thumps.  She could hear the slower, unsteady pounding of Dust’s hooves for a short while, before a short void of sound – and then the pegasus swung over her head, her wings beating in rhythm.  Only her eyes, tired and red and puffy, betrayed her.

  Good enough.  “Dust, go with Gilda,” she said, tossing her head to point to the hen, who was already nearing the treeline.  “You’re on spearhead.”

  “And you?”  Dust’s voice was cracked and dry, and it sounded like she’d flown fifty laps in the few seconds between.

  “Giving them a show they won’t forget.”

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