"... Hit, hostiles combat ineffective, move to clean-up."
Using the remaining block 15 Wasps circling overhead to confirm the mages had been dealt with, Tom got out from behind his cover and regrouped with Mari and Lisa.
"Tom! You're bleeding!"
"Yeah, it'll heal in a moment. More importantly, are you fine Lisa?"
Seeing the entirety of Tom's left arm and shoulder stained red from the rock shard that had clipped off half of his left ear, Mari felt faint as she rushed to start healing him.
Needless to say, Tom brushed off Mari's worry as he had survived much worse and focused on Lisa who had just experienced her first somewhat fair fight.
"Yeah I'm fine, but only thanks to you Mari, you seriously saved my life."
Realising things would have been bad if Mari hadn't stepped in and shielded her with magic, Lisa got rid of her hate and pride for a moment and gave her aunt a large hug.
"T-that's only because of this r-radio, it was really helpful finding you guys and communicating in the middle of battle."
(Aww, so she can be honest… At least once in a while.)
Letting the family do their bonding without interruptions, Tom watched warmly over Lisa and Mari with a shit-eating grin plastered all across his face.
Enjoying the sight for a few seconds, Tom's eyes turned cold as he noticed movement.
(Welp, back to it.)
Turning without hesitation, Tom brought his M-909 up to the shoulder and fired a single round at a mage who was fleeing the scene, shattering his tibia to make sure he couldn't run away.
Catching up to the screaming mage in a matter of seconds, Tom descended on him like a bird of prey.
"ARH!-"
"Shh, this isn't even the bad part."
Locking the mage's left arm by setting his knee down on it, Tom nailed his right hand into the ground with his bayonet before getting the mage to stop screaming by smacking his shattered leg with the butt of his rifle.
"Who do you work for?"
"FUC!- ARG!"
"Wrong answer."
Culling the first sight of resistance with a right hook to the face, Tom broke the mage's cheek bone with the first hit, then he punished silence by shattering his nose, then finally when he realised he wasn't going to get any answers out of the mage, Tom caved in his skull with a final and third punch.
"... Well, fuck."
Shaking excess brain matter off of his knuckles as Lisa silently approached, Tom started padding the mage's corpse down to look for intel.
"... Did you kill him?"
"Yeah, I'm not really in the mood for taking prisoners. Either start checking the other corpse or wait back with Mari, this is grim work so I can't really fault you for sitting this one out."
While this was also a skill valuable enough to pass on, Tom had no intention of forcing Lisa to search through heavily disfigured corpses so he left it up to her if she wanted to join in.
"Who said I'm sitting this one out? Since you couldn't control your temper we have to find out who these guys are some other way."
Slightly offended that Tom just expected her to sit this out, Lisa lashed out at Tom as she also started going through the corpses and viscera left behind after the airburst drone bombardment.
"I'll help out too, what are we looking for?"
Not okay with being the only person standing around, Mari suppressed her need to vomit as she also picked a corpse from the pile.
"Parchment, insignia's, patches and anything identifying or indicating their next orders. We need to find out if this was just an advance element or the entire strike group."
Having finished with his first corpse, Tom tossed it aside to where he would create a burn pile while telling Lisa what to look for as he moved on to the next.
"And if you need to puke, do it away from the corpses, I don't want intel ruined by your last meal."
"Rog'."
With 3 people working through the corpse, a pile of processed corpses were quickly erected, but no intel was found.
"Strange…"
While Mari could tell there was something wrong with the lack of intel, Tom's sixth sense was screaming at him, but he couldn't place his finger on what exactly the problem was.
"No letters, no orders, no identifications, no unit markings other than those two banners… Don't fucking tell me!"
It took Tom a moment since it had been a while since he had seen this kind of tactic, but his subconscious had instantly recognised what was going on. this hadn't been a strike, an advance element or some kind of expedition; it was a probing attack.
To confirm his suspicions, Tom rushed over to the pile of bodies and pulled the armour off of one of the mages, this confirmed his suspicions as the inside of the polished metal plate was rusted, the undercoat was made out of uncomfortable and cheap hemp weave.
(In that case, where the fuck is the survalance team!?)
Signalling for Lisa and Mari to be quiet, Tom accessed his neural uplink and scanned the surrounding area for any sign of a scout or surveillance element.
(Nothing? Then was this just a throwaway attack? No, they were way too well equipped for that, and then there was that massive illusion… THAT'S IT!)
Looking around the area again, Tom's attention was immediately drawn to a somewhat intricate metal sphere the size of a torso and the gleam of a monster core in its centre.
The sphere looked way more expensive than anything else in the area, while the mage's staffs had looked quality form a few hundred metres away through a scope, up close it was clear they were of low standard, but this sphere looked brand new, it didn't have speck of rust and even the wooden carrying handles were spotless. With no other way to test his theory, Tom wordlessly raised his M-909 and fired at the sphere, breaking the crystal-like core in its centre as a formless pressure seemed to disappear from the area.
"Wait, was that?"
Sensitive to the mana around her, Mari felt the change in atmosphere almost instantly as she felt her heart drop.
"Yeah, we were under surveillance by someone… This attack was a probing action to confirm what he is up against, and by responding the way I did I've shown him all my tricks. I can't believe I fell for it."
Crouching down, Tom grabbed his head in irritation as he reached a conclusion he didn't really want to admit.
"It sounds like you already know who did this."
Suspicious of how much Tom all of a sudden seemed to know about their attacker's motives, Mari couldn't stop herself from speaking up.
"That's because I do, well not precisely…"
"Just spit it out already."
Not used to Tom being vague, Lisa also joined Mari's side as she felt she had a right to know what the fuck was going on.
"This was a fucking textbook probing attack, a USIE textbook probing attack to be presice."
"Don't tell me."
Finally understanding what he was hinting at, Lisa felt a cold sweat break out as she understood why Tom wouldn't want to admit it.
"Yeah, I have no idea why or how, but it seems we're fighting against someone with intimate knowledge of my old world's strategies and tactics… In other words a peer level antagonist."
-
In the capital of the Kingdom, among numerous mansions of venerable old houses and families a single mansion stood out just as much as the Randall family which called it home had been living there since the founding of the Kingdom itself. The current head of the family was a young, blond haired man by the name of Adam known as a brilliant and ruthless strategist throughout the kingdom he had revolutionised terror and dissent suppression, leading him to create his very own knight order which dealt with those matters.
"Master Randall, it seems that the surveillance spell has stopped functioning."
"Yeah, it would appear so Wilfred."
Leaning back into his leather-bound armchair, Adam started analysing the information he had just obtained as his butler Wilfred fulfilled his role flawlessly and poured him a glass of wine before silently leaving.
(That large guy definitely strikes me as a mercenary… But the choice of a M-909 with a LNX electro optical sight tells me he's far more refined than that…)
Adam's knowledge of USIE weapons, equipment, tactics and doctrine was flawless, so he wondered why the merc used something as old as a M-909, but then again that could be because of familiarity with the highly adaptable M-909 / M-709 / M-507 / M-133 family.
(Then there's the issue of those Wasp's? Why the fuck would he only use 5 for a strike?)
While the M-19 Wasp was an adaptable, robust and cheap loitering munition they had mostly been replaced by the M-23 Hornet and were only used in saturation attacks where thousands of them would swarm and overwhelm hostile air defence, so just using 5 in an attack and treating them like they were Hornets was highly irregular.
(That's it!)
Initially confused by the merc's unreasonable behaviour, Adam realised his behaviour must be born of a lack of war material, not only was his probing attack met with only two rifles and a laughable amount of drones, but everything from the M-19 Wasp's to the M-909 were old, cheap and reliable. While these tactics were not something the main USIE armed forces made use of, it was something the various wetwork units and grey forces working under the USIE frequently made use of.
"Even in this life I can't seem to shake those fucking scabs…"
No matter what he did, it seemed Adam couldn't escape these damned lowlives.
If they did something as basic as their job the handlers of the lowlives would boast incessantly and try absorb the proper army's budgets and the second they failed or fucked up (which happened often) they would cry and demand help from the same special forces they did everything to fuck over. While the handlers were bad, the fucking merc's and wetworkers was way worse to deal with, given any chance they would attack the regulear forces, try to escape their contracts or even attack USIE intrests.
(While the idea of using undesirables as cannon fodder is great on paper, those fucking PMC's always seem to fuck up their control over them.)
Still, as Adam had dealt with plenty of dirty mercs in his old life, he was somewhat used to dealing with them.
(I need to do a few more pokes to find out exactly what their capabilities are, but with the entire country's resources put into squashing there's no need to fight fair or even just make a single move at a time.
"Wilfred!"
"Yes master?"
Calling on his butler, Adam took a swig of wine before relaying instructions.
"I need the king to sign a new decree and close the southern region, enforcing a total ban on beastmen and demi's as a defensive precaution until the present situation is dealt with. Also send word for the rest of the disposable adventurer strike teams to deploy under order set #4."
While the Randall family was powerful and deeply intertwined in the Kingdom's power structure to a level where their words couldn't be ignored by anyone, Adam was the only person who could command the king in this way.
At Adam's word armies could be levied, countries overthrown and even the king replaced.
"Understood, master. I'll dispatch a messenger to the crown immediately."
As his butler left, Adam took another swig of wine as a satisfied smile spread across his face. Unlike all the past uprisings and countries he had crushed as the leader of the suppression unit, this seemed like more of a fair fight than anything else that came before.
This was something Adam welcomed.
"Finally I understood why he gave me a second life in this shithole of a world… If things go well then I'll finally be free."