If Kostia hadn't already thought that Klark was insane, she would damn well believe it now. Brave, but insane. Ambushing the Maunon was all to the good, of course, Kostia would never turn down adding to that particular body count, but this was folly. The two of them against nearly half a dozen might be good odds if Klark was an expert tracker and ambusher like Kostia was, but the girl made almost as much noise as a yong pauna did! In Kostia's experience, it was rather hard to successfully ambush your targets when they could hear you coming a mile off!
For all that Klark was better at stealth and woodcraft than the Maunon were…well, that honestly wasn't saying much. As loud as she was, they were sure to hear her and spot her, which meant she would probably get herself killed. Kostia couldn't let that happen, for a multitude of reasons, not the least of which being the fact that she owed the stranger Niylah's life.
Besides, vaguely suspicious foreigner or not, the girl clearly wasn't a big fan of The Mountain and those that lived inside of it. The idea that Klark was playing some sort of trick, that she was secretly in league with the Mountain, had already been dismissed when they had set out from Niylah's trading post, and nothing Kostia had seen came anywhere close to inspiring a change in her opinion on the matter.
Carefully dropping out of her tree, she quickly darted after Klark, grabbing her arm and pulling her close enough to speak without being overheard.
"What, exactly, is your plan, Klark? Stealth isn't exactly your strong suit, and if you use that fayagon of yours, they'll bomb our villages in revenge." She hissed, and Klark started, staring at her with wide eyes.
"What are you talking about? Why would they attack you over that?" she responded, and Kostia blinked at her in baffled bemusement for a moment before shaking her head.
"None of the clans use fayagons, we can't. Anytime one of us so much as takes a gun back to our village, they use some sort of weapon to destroy that village. No matter what we do, we can't hide from it, stop it, or avoid it. If you use that 'gon, the nearest village and everyone in it is dead." She said firmly, stressing the danger as stridently as she could, and Clarke paled before cursing quite creatively.
"Fine, I was planning on killing the first one with my kukri and shooting the rest, but I guess that won't work after all." The blonde finally said, frowning as she considered the situation. "We need to move fast, though. The Mountain won't have sent these guys out alone in something that small to recover a hunk of sky-metal that big. These must just be scouts."
"I agree, which means if we kill them quickly enough, they won't have time to do anything before their reinforcements arrive. We will have to split up if we want to deal with this in a timely manner." Kostia nodded, before hesitating and continuing rather more delicately. "Are you able to sneak up on them, Klark? I know woodcraft isn't exactly your strongsuit…"
"I'll have you know that I was best in my class for Earth Skills and combat training." Klark retorted with a sullen grumble, ignoring the surprised scoff that Kostia wasn't entirely able to keep inside with admirable aloofness. "I can certainly sneak up on a couple of shut-ins that are half-deaf because they're wearing Class A HAZMAT suits. The main issue is doing it quietly. Can you manage to kill with your first shot, or do you need to work your way around for knife-work?"
Kostia could only imagine that the 'Class A HAZMAT suit' were the strange equipment the Maunon had to wear to survive. Nothing else made sense contextually, and she frowned unhappily even as she mentally added yet another mark on the running tally she was keeping under the heading off 'Strange Things That Klark Inexplicably Knows'.
"If not for their 'HAZMAT Suits'," she said the unfamiliar words slowly. "Then yes, a single arrow could easily kill them. However, the suits can often interfere with an arrow's path, and are sometimes even armored enough to stop such an attack outright. We will need to get closer and use cold steel."
"I thought so." Klark sighed, shaking her head before pulling away from Kostia's grip and gesturing to the far side of the area. "You take care of the ones on that side, I'll deal with the ones over here. Regardless of anything else, I think we can agree that you stand a better chance at getting across the road unseen than I do."
Kostia could certainly agree with that particular detail, even if she was polite enough (and capable of self-censorship to keep any commentary about just how true it might have been to herself. No point in alienating Niylah's friend, and her own temporary(?) ally when it was easily avoidable. If it hadn't been for her surprise, she wouldn't have even scoffed earlier, and she somewhat regretted it now. Diplomacy and a smooth tongue were significant parts of her arsenal, and she was really rather quite proud of her talents with both.
The two parted ways, Kostia silently making her way through the trees until she reached the road. One of the Maunon was watching it, proving that he wasn't a complete fool, but he was easily distracted by a small stone being thrown at a tree, the deep thunk drawing his attention as he raised his fayagon and moved cautiously to investigate. With him well out of position, darting across the cleared space was child's play, and she slipped into cover and settled in to listen for a moment. It wouldn't do to move too quickly and stumble across one of the other Maunon and get herself into some serious trouble.
The patient hunter always got the prey, in the end. And Kostia could be very, very patient indeed.
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Clark growled lowly to herself as the man she was currently hunting stopped and scanned his surroundings for the umpteenth time. This entire day was playing havoc on her confidence, because she wasn't nearly as stealthy as she had always thought she was. It had been foolish and arrogant of her to assume that the ability to move around the Ark, with its perfectly flat, even, featureless halls, would be the same as moving around on Earth, with different gravity, ground that moved under her feet, and all the clutter that natureseemed intent of leaving scattered about. Clutter that liked to get underfoot and make a whole lot of noise, no matter how hard she tried to avoid it.
Fortunately, the Mountain Man was even worse at searching his surroundings and triangulating the origination point of things like snapping twigs that Clarke was at staying quiet. As a result, despite her inability to move with the same silent grace that even Niylah (never mind Kostia!) had been able to move with, the bastard hadn't caught her yet. She mentally paused for a moment, marveling over the ease with which the insult flowed from her mental tongue, never mind the fact that she was getting ready to assassinate a man she had never met, from a society that hadn't wronged her in anyway, and she wasn't even considering hesitating. Oh, sure, her ancestor had, apparently, designated everyone inside Mount Weather as a traitor, but why should the condemnations of a woman she had never met, about a group of stranger that she had never met, over a situation she knew literally nothing about, matter to her in the least?
It shouldn't, logically, but it did. Besides, if she was so inclined to go entirely off of logic, and if she was going to ignore all of that stuff about prophecy and an entire culture primed to practically worship her (which she was going to ignore, just like she had been doing semi-successfully since she first heard it), it was far more logical and in keeping with her goals to ally with the Clans. Not only were there more of them, but getting on their good side guaranteed safety and aid for her people when they finally arrived and easy travel through lands that would otherwise be very hostile. Not to mention the fact that the Clans actually knew how to live in this world. Her fellow Arkers and the people of Mount Weather didn't.
He finally gave up again and returned to his task, which was preparing a handful of cameras for concealed mounting. Fortunately, Clarke was pretty sure none of the devices would actually be live until the set-up was complete, which meant that she didn't need to worry herself much over her face and activities getting sent to The Mountain when she ambushed and killed the man.
She hefted her blade, fingers clenching and unclenching in a rhythmic ripple down it's hilt as she crept closer and closer, the unceasing movement betraying the anxiety she felt as she padded as quietly as she could towards the man that would be her first kill, though she wasn't naïve enough to believe that he would be her last.
She was only a handful of yards away when she stepped on yet another twig, and this time the man couldn't possibly fail to recognize which direction it had come from. He spun, raising his rifle, and Clarke darted forward with a foul curse, her kukri flitting out in a glittering arc as she tried to cut his arm and knock the gun barrel aside.
She missed.
The Mountain Man screamed, a muffled, ungodly howl of agony, as her awkward lunge instead removed the fingers of his trigger-hand at the first knuckle. She stuttered in her attack, briefly, the shock of it breaking through her muscle memory, as he collapsed to his knees and clutched the mangled limb. The kukri, now stained with the slightest smear of crimson life-blood, finally swung into motion again. She twisted her wrist and brought the blade back around to bite into his neck. The sound of it was sickening, and the vibration that flowed down her arm as the blade struck his spine and shuddered to a halt, cutting off his wordless expressions of suffering.
She released her grip on the weapon's hilt, hands shaking slightly, and the freshly-made corpse slumped to the side. The weapon still jutted from his flesh, crimson blood spurting periodically, and as she watched the freshly exposed flesh of his skin began to bubble and blacken under the touch of Earth's atmosphere.
She stared down at him for a moment that seemed to stretch into eternity, feeling the questions and doubts she was struggling to hold at bay pounding on the mental walls she was desperately placing in their path, before taking a deep, fortifying breath and reaching down to yank the blade free. The cameras, after a long moment of contemplation, were reluctantly but firmly smashed. As useful as they might possibly be to her, the chances that there were some form of tracker in them was simply too damn high. She couldn't risk being tracked with them, or worse yet, bringing down some form of retribution down on Kostia's people if what the girl said about how The Mountain responded to the clans having more advanced technology was true.
Flicking her blade to clear at least some of the blood now coating it, she focused on settling her breathing and listening for the other man on this flank. She heard nothing, neither gunfire nor quick movement to indicate that anyone had heard him screaming. Good. That meant she still had the element of surprise, which was the most important thing at the moment. It was the only thing that she could use to balance their ranged advantage, and losing it could quite literally prove fatal.
Activating her Focus, she scanned the treeline carefully, searching for any technological signatures. Only a faint echo returned, a radio signal that was moving slowly around the area near the pod. That had to be the other man, but it posed something of a problem. If he wasn't in the trees, but was instead keeping an eye on the pod itself, ambushing him would be far, far more difficult and dangerous. Not impossible, but she was definitely wishing that she had a bow (and knew how to use one) like Kostia did to make the whole thing a whole lot easier.
So, presuming that attempting to bum rush a man armed with a fully-automatic rifle in the open was a terrible idea (which it most certainly was), she needed another way to get her hands on the man. So, if going to him was suicidal, she had to figure out how to bring him to her. The possibility of a faked distress call was immediately discarded. She didn't know Kostia's status, didn't know if her target would shout for his friends and get the clanswoman killed by making the other men move. Too much to risk, which meant it would have to be something relatively innocent. Something that would catch his interest and his involvement, but not cause alarm or cause him to call for help.
Easier said than done, damn it all.
Alright, she could do this. All she had to do was come up with something simple but effective, something impossible for her to fuck up that would none the less get the job done. Not to worry, not to worry. It wasn't as if this entire train of thought was her mentally trying to buy time for herself to think of something, not at all. That would be absurd.
Her eyes narrowed as an idea occurred.
"ALIE, do you have enough comms traffic to falsify transmissions locally? Specifically, can you fake one that will get that fellow to come over here? A request for help with something benign, like setting up the cameras?" she asked her companion(?) quietly. There was a moment of silence, she assumed it was contemplative, before ALIE responded.
"I can, but it will have to be very simple and short. I don't have sufficient voice samples for anything longer and more complicated than a handful of words." She said slowly, falling silent for a moment before a male voice began speaking. "Hey, Markus, can I get a hand over here? I'm having a problem…"
"Goddamnit, Theo, what the hell have you done now?" the other man growled in irritation, and Clarke could see his signal stop it's circuit near the pod and start drawing steadily closer to her own position. Readying her blade, she ducked into cover once more. The key would be to wait until Markus had spotted Theo's body, then attack from behind while he was still in shock. Not the most noble of chances at victory, but it was her best chance of victory, which was really what mattered. Fair-play and noblesse oblige were for those that didn't have an entire society's survival hinging on their every move.
She moved slowly, carefully, around the peripheral of the space as he drew closer, watching him carefully, fingers rippling along the hilt of her weapon once again. He passed, grumbling and coming fairly close to stomping as he went, and Clarke couldn't help but be grateful for the noise that he was making. It made her feel quite a bit more comfortable as she slipped out of the woods to pad along behind him.
The moment he spotted his friend was obvious, because his weapon snapped up as he screamed the man's name. Clarke darted forwards, blade held low and ready to pierce, but this man was either quicker on the uptake than the deceased or a damn sight luckier, because he spun around. Clarke swore as she found herself confronting the business end of the man's rifle, and she lurched to the side as he snarled and hit the trigger.
The rifle snarled, and Clarke gave a short shriek of pain as twin spikes of heat slammed into her left shoulder and forearm. Gritting her teeth, she pressed forward and slammed right into him, throwing both of them to the ground as each sought to kill the other. Curses, forest debris, and limbs flew, and Clarke gave another shout of pain as Markus's fist landed directly on one of her gunshot wounds. She stabbed, blindly, and Markus gave a hoarse shout in response as steel bit into flesh, before punching her in the face.
Snarling in defiance, Clarke drove her forehead into his own. It wasn't quite as successful as she might have hoped, given the fact that the man was wearing a HAZMAT suit that provided plenty of protection from such a thing, but it was distracting enough for her to be able to roll on top of him. Yanking her kukri free, she lifted it and brought it down into his chest. He gave a chocked-off yell, a spray of blood painting her hands, and she pulled it free before plunging it down again. Stabbing and stabbing and stabbing, blood flying and gore staining. Someone was yelling something, a voice that was vaguely familiar, but all that Clarke could focus on was making sure that the man who had shot her was dead. That he couldn't do anything to hurt her or the two women that she had, even if only tentatively, befriended.
Strong hands latched onto her own and held her weapon in place, buried in the man's chest, and as she looked up with a snarl, Clarke found herself receiving a face full of water. That certainly managed to snap her out of her bloodlust, and she started spluttering, releasing the hilt of the kukri to try and scrub at her face with her hands, only to stop with a cry of pain as her left arm protested violent. The hands holding her own forced them down, back into a position of repose, and the pain faded into a dull ache.
"Clarke, he's dead!" Kostia shouted into her face, still holding her firmly despite her struggles, and Clarke blinked and stared as the words struggled to penetrate the fear-fog coating her mind. She looked from Kostia's face to the man beneath her, to the blade still buried in his chest, and back again. Recognizing that Clarke was at least partially with her, mentally speaking at least, Kostia spoke again. "Clarke, it's okay. He's dead, he can't hurt any of us. C'mon, pull yourself together. We need to get out of here before the Maunde realizes what happened."
"Kostia?" Clarke asked softly, and Kostia nodded as her expression took on a kinder edge.
"Yeah, it's me. You need to calm down and pull yourself together, okay? We have to get out of here before more of them arrive, and we have to get you treated." She repeated, before clasping Clarke by the back of her neck and squeezing it gently as she pressed their foreheads together briefly with a faint smile. "You did a good job, Clarke, but it's time for us to leave."
Leaving? Leaving would be good, before the second group of Mountain Men showed up, Clarke thought drowsily. But there was something important, she knew, something to do with her. What was it, though? It was hard to think, but she knew that whatever she was forgetting, it was too importantfor her to let it stay forgotten, no matter how tempting it was at the moment. Something about a secret, something she couldn't let anyone else know…
She gasped and tried to shoot to her feet, only to get halfway there and have to clutch onto a worried Kostia as her head swam. Shaking her head in an attempt to clear it didn't help, but she forced the wooziness from the blood loss aside and focused on her freshly-rediscovered objective.
"We need to burn the pod. We can't let them get anything useful from the pod. Can't let them find out…" She muttered, grimly, turning resolutely towards her target and starting to walk, noticing absently how much darker the shade of the trees seemed right now. She could do this, all she had to do was gather up some spare gas from the Mountain Men vehicle, get some sticks or whatever, and torch the damn thing to get rid of DNA. She could do this.
She could…
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Kostia sighed as Klark collapsed into her arms after barely a handful of steps. She admired the girl's determination, but in this case it was far more foolishness than anything else. After two fayagon wounds, even the most durable of warriors would have been in rough shape without treatment, never mind this slip of a thing.
Laying the blond down on the ground, she quickly checked Klark's wounds, sighing in relief as she found both entry and exit wounds. All the Clans knew that having one of the 'bullets' that a fayagon shot get stuck inside of a wound was (nine times out of ten) a death sentence. Reassured, she set to work quickly, pulling out various medicinal mixes and bandages to patch her up. Kostia might not be a healer, like her old foster-mate Nyko, but as a Scout (as the Scout, some might say) she was more than familiar with basic field aid.
As she worked, she considered what Klark had said about the 'pod'. For one thing, she had seemed adamant that it had to be burned to prevent the Maunon from 'finding out' or 'getting anything useful'. That, combined with the blond hair that she had found inside of the 'pod', painted a picture that she was feeling very unsure about. A picture that could, if it was what she hoped and feared, change everything as she knew it.
It was also a picture that meant she was in full agreement with Klark that the 'pod' needed to be burned. Whether she was right or wrong, preventing the Maunon from getting anything that they wanted was a cause that she could happily get behind. Once Klark's wounds were treated, she would deal with that herself, then they would get the hell out of here. And once she got Klark back to Polis, she and Leksa would have a nice little sit down with the blonde and find out who she was, where she was from, and why she was reallyhere.
If the world was about to change, if old things were waking up and futures long anticipated were coming to pass, she was not going to be taken by surprise.