The team treaded carefully through the forest, boots muted against the damp ground. No one spoke. The only sounds were the occasional rustle of gear and the distant caws of unseen birds.
They kept their heads on a swivel—ears sharp, eyes scanning for movement. Visibility remained low, the mist coiling between trees like a titanic snake, each bend behind a tree hiding uncertain outcomes.
Ahead of Eve, Warrant Falin suddenly raised a fist.
Halt.
Eve immediately dropped to a knee, raising her own fist to silently pass the signal down the line. Like a wave, the motion repeated through the task force's staggered formation. Everyone froze.
A moment later, Falin's muted voice came through the comms. They were making an effort to whisper, so as to not reveal their location.
"Fireteam of four hostiles. They're sweeping the area. We're moving right."
The Warrant paused for a short while, as if waiting for something. Then a hand signal.
Move.
The formation shifted, drifting quietly to the right. The forest closed in tighter, branches drooping low, roots tangled underfoot. Eve, being on the left wing of their weaveable chevron, advanced with her rifle at the ready, scanning for the fireteam that the warrant had spotted as they continued.
They moved in silence, slipping between trees and thick ferns. As they neared the area where the enemy patrol had been spotted, a soft ping appeared in their HUDs—Warrant Falin marking the hostiles' last known location. The location ping hovered, a red outline resting quietly near a tree line.
Eve's trigger finger inched from its place on the magazine well to closer to the trigger. She kept loose but attentive and ready as they passed the location. Nothing moved. No shots. No voices. The patrol was either gone or unaware. They passed the area without incident.
The task force pressed deeper into the forest, the terrain becoming more erratic. Fallen trees forced them to climb or duck under, moss-coated trunks slippery under gloved hands. Woody undergrowth bogged down their boots. Luckily, their combat suits and uniform were worn close to their body so they didn't get snagged on vegetation. Every so often, a bird call rang out and wings fluttered overhead, then vanished into the white canopy.
Then, Falin's voice came back over comms.
"We're approaching the Shepherd's last known position. Tracker teams, get ready."
Minutes crawled by, then finally, the first sign of the Shepherd. A pair of ferns had grown into each other, not just overlapping but fully interlacing, each leafy tendril woven between the others in a perfect, symmetrical mesh. A mutation caused by the Cloud Shepherd.
They kept moving.
Moments later, the team spooked a herd of deer. But these weren't normal—each animal had four eyes, two sets melted into one another like overlapping sideways eights. Their gaze lingered on the task force as they fled.
Then, they found the path. Worn, winding, and strange—it was formed from parting undergrowth and new soil rising from below. Fog rested on top of it almost as if it were pavement. Trees bent in unnatural ways, almost curving away from the path to provide whatever walked it a wide berth. The path itself twisted through the underbrush as if the forest itself had parted to let something through. It was easily the size of a single-lane road. The mist thickened.
Though no one spoke, everyone in the task force knew that this was where the Cloud Shepherd had walked.
"Warrant." One of the BHISL squad leaders had spoken up over comms. "Which way?"
Warrant Falin glanced both ways, up and down, then pointed down one way, where the clouds seemed to be thicker. "TRACE teams on the left—squad one as point. BHISL will take the right side of the road."
The units were already in motion before they had finished speaking. Seo took point in front of the TRACE squads as they crept down the path just off the road, using the trees bordering the path as partial concealment. Behind Seo stood Eve, then Taeyeon, followed by Vian. After them trailed Isa at the head of the Seaward Wolves.
As they continued, the fog let up a bit and visibility became clearer. Eve was on high alert even more so now: with the fog cleared up, it would be easier to see hostiles, but their concealment was gone as well.
Even though the grouse troop transport heli had been damaged in the previous ambush, Eve felt reassured that if anything happened they would be able to call on gunships better suited to close air support.
Hope that the crew members of that grouse are alright, Eve thought.
As if manifesting bad luck, that was when Eve was sent toppling over as something invisible slammed into her and ripped into her chest.
The pain was immediate. Searing hot, tearing into her skin, her nerves on fire. "Shit. Operator down! Take cover!" Taeyeon shouted. She dragged Eve behind a tree before bringing up her DMR, scanning for threats.
The excruciating pain slowly dulled as Eve came to her senses. She gingerly probed the impact point with her hand. It was circular and hole-shaped. A bullet? Luckily, her body armour had taken most of the impact, and she didn't feel any bleeding—though she was most likely heavily bruised underneath.
There were several thuds as bullets began to hit the dirt next to them.
"Hostile contact! Take cover, take cover, take cover!" Eve shouted over comms, her voice choked and raspy as she attempted to speak right after being hit. Eve stood and repositioned further in the forest, crouching, using shrubs and trees as concealment and cover.
Vian ran to Eve and checked her over—no external wounds, and no vitals were hit. A direct impact to the chest, but like Taeyeon on their insertion, her body armour had taken the hit. "Sergeant—" she started, before Eve cut her off.
"I'm fine, corporal. Now get your gun up." Eve's training kicked in as she shrugged off the pain and braced herself behind a tree. Eve brought up her FLR. Scanning through her red-dot she didn't see anything—but then, more rounds whizzed and punched through the air besides her.
The squads went dead silent as they all crouched or laid prone behind cover, trying to discern the location of the shots. Luckily, no one else was hit. Given the volume of fire, Eve was sure that it wasn't a single person and most likely a squad. Curiously, she didn't hear the reports or cracks of the gun itself as bullets still thumped into the dirt next to them.
"...Subsonic rounds[1]," she concluded.
Unless they were dealing with a sniper team stationed far enough that the gun reports couldn't be heard, there was no way a simply suppressed weapon would make no noise at all. Judging by the sheer volume of fire, she could rule out a conventional sniper team—bolt-actions were too slow to sustain that rate of fire. A DMR team seemed unlikely as well.
Even though the fog had lifted slightly, landing accurate shots from long range through overlapping layers of mist and drifting clouds would be nearly impossible. Unless, of course, the Asphodelians—or whoever these hostiles were—had developed some kind of tech they hadn't encountered yet.
Still, the possibility of a fireteam along with a marksman in overwatch remained. They had to proceed with caution.
"TRACE 1 SL to all squads, be advised that hostiles are using subsonic ammunition." Even though the other squads had likely figured it out already, it was always better to be thorough than to miss crucial information.
A stream of 'copy's filled the squad leaders' communications.
"Taeyeon, see anything?" Eve continued looking. Every time the gunfire died down, one of the TRACE, Seaward, or BHISL operators would fire blindly into the fog, and the incoming gunfire would pick up again. Now, however, it would appear that the hostiles were firing more conservatively.
"Negative, sergeant."
Eve flipped up her magnifier over her red dot. Nothing.
Warrant Falin's voice came back over comms. "Continue with caution. If this was an ambush, then there could be traps as well. We don't want to get bogged down here at this one position. Push, push, push."
Eve rose into a low walk as their column started walking forwards again. The fire harassed them in small bursts, but with their camouflage along with the fog and forest as concealment, they were able to crawl forwards at a considerable pace.
There was a flash of movement. Eve noticed and immediately brang up her rifle.
"Movement front!" The column immediately halted, and Eve pinged where she thought the location would be in the others' HUDs. Her magnifier still up, Eve spotted a team of hostiles, darting further into the forest as they approached. By the time Eve tried to discern their details, they were already too well hidden to determine their affiliation by camo or uniform.
They were close enough, however, that Eve could still make out a muzzle poking out of the undergrowth.
"Contact front, contact front, contact front!" It appeared that Warrant Falin had noticed as well.
Out of the BHISL squads, there was a single autorifleman. Lying prone in the underbrush, he swept the general area that the fire had come from with short, controlled bursts from his LMG. Around him, the sharp reports of the team's suppressed rifles joined the rhythmic thudding of the machine gun now that they had a visible target to engage.
Eve firmly held her FLR in a c-clamp. As one head peeked out from the brush, she pulled the trigger twice and felt the powerful rifle in her hands jolt as two rounds landed, one after another. She didn't know if they had hit on target. However, the head quickly retracted, if that was any confirmation at all.
As the BHISL autorifleman stopped to reload, a louder racket of LMG fire burst out as the hostiles' machine gun took the moment to answer. Rather unfortunately, the sound was something that Eve recognized. Is that a 412? Eve wondered. The SSW[2] 412 was the Asphodelians' best squad support weapon—however, it was only issued to special operations forces.
From Eve's vantage point, she couldn't get a clear shot, even though the muzzle flashes and the tracers going past her were telltale signs enough of its position.
"Taeyeon, can you kill that thing?" Eve shouted. She continued firing in its general direction in bursts, hoping to slow the LMG down as a BHISL operator was hit by a stray ricochet. A squadmate quickly tourniqueted them.
Their advance had completely stalled as they faced a wall of seemingly infinite fire and lead.
Sharp, piercing reports sounded above Eve, coming from Taeyeon's DMR. She had climbed a bit higher and had a better view, using the mountainous terrain. The Spec Corporal's sleek DMR hissed as she loosed a salvo of pinpoint shots at the LMG.
It quickly went silent, and Taeyeon fired a couple more rounds to make sure.
"Killed it, sergeant," she said matter-of-factly.
"Good fucking[3] shots," Warrant Falin roared. "Push now!"
The combined forces of TRACE and BHISL quickly converged on the hostiles' previous position, arriving within seconds as they broke out into a run. BHISL's autorifleman combed the area once more before they checked the positions.
As per protocol, a majority of the squads broke off and maintained security while the others dead-checked. There were only two bodies at the position, the machine gunner and what seemed to be a rifleman. Eve put a few more rounds into them both before she and Warrant Falin nudged them over with their feet.
Eve remarked that Taeyeon's shots were right on—two had hit the soldier directly in the chest, one had hit the soldier in the head, and one more lodged itself deep within his gun.
Eve's questions as to their opponents were realized as she examined the guns and uniform. The boxy LMG was indeed a 412—belt fed, 200 rounds with a soft pouch. The rifleman used a compact, integrally suppressed gbbr—this was known to the Halcyon foundation as the AFR 12. While they usually used supersonic rounds, the engineers behind it had tweaked it to be able to take subsonic rounds.
They were known to be deadly accurate even as a main battle rifle, hence the LPVO mounted on top of the AFR.
They were dressed in ASCP—Asphodelian special forces' camouflage, and bore the signature gear: plate carrier and body armour over a similar combat suit to that of TRACE or BHISL's, along with a helmet. The helmet that the Asphodelian operators wore also had gas filters, visors, and were self-sealing. They were almost as if not equal to the Halcyon Foundation's level of technology.
"Asphodelian spec ops," Warrant Falin breathed. "By their patches, 41st Blood Angels Regiment. Well, isn't that great. Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck."
The warrant managed to make a single vowel of profanity last a good five seconds and everyone within earshot or on squad comms chuckled a bit. However, the warrant's humor was quickly lost as they now knew who they were dealing with. The Blood Angel Regiments (or BARs for short) were known to be the counterpart to TRACE and BHISL combined on behalf of the Asphodelian forces—they used any and all tactics possible and available to them. They were infamously effective and ruthless.
"It's not like them to leave their operators behind, especially with this tech. I wonder why—did they get pulled out of the area by something else?" Eve noticed that the gear that the BAR operators were wearing was destroyed by bullets that certainly weren't theirs. They destroyed their own gear? Why would they do that...?
"Don't they usually do everything that they can to get their operators back? Looks like they just trashed their gear and left." Eve commented.
"Yeah. It's certainly uncharacteristic of them," Warrant Falin added. "I'll leave this as a point on the map for now," they said. "HQ can send someone to take a look later if they want to. Ignoring that, we continue." They paused, marking the dead BAR operators as a digital ping.
"Get back to your positions—we need to find the Shepherd ASAP, something fishy's going on with Asphodelian forces here."
The warrant paused mid-step, as if they had just thought of something.
"Oh, shit, wait—could they know about the Shepherd as well?"
[1] Just what they sound like- these are bullets that travel slower than the speed of sound. While they have less stopping power and have atrocious ballistics / bullet drop off, they are stupid quiet.
[2] Should be pretty obvious but SSW = Squad Support Weapon
[3] you're not supposed to swear over comms, but... I made an exception for the story.