Under the Shifting Wastelands
Prologue
Athena checked the chronometer at the bottom of her visor for the tenth time since her disembarkation from the dropship thirty minutes ago. It read 0535. "He's late." She whispered silently to herself to convey her annoyance. Her spotter next to her, RJ, was still messing with his binoculars for the seventh time since the drop. Athena looked through her scope down on the flat plain below the ridge they were camped on. It was pocketed with hundreds of craters and trenchs from every kind of ordance imaginable, there was even a massive crater from the impact of a ships orbital cannon during the last war for Thraycia. Athena wished her target would hurry up and show up as the intel promised he would. Their target was a high ranking officer with the Cascade of Justice army, a noted renegade and traitor to the Empire of Thraycia. Which was why Athena and her team had been brought in. Their mission was simple. Move in, eliminate the renegade, get out. There was no room for error or second chances, if they were discovered, the government would be in an uproar. Athena suddenly tensed as a red blip appeared on her tactical display on the inside of her visor, just under her left eye below the chronometer. She reached over and nudged RJ to make sure he was watching, he nodded at her before looking through his binoculars in the direction of the contact. Out on the cratered plain a land-based transport had pulled out of one of the larger craters, followed by two biker escorts with large sidecar gun mounts. The convoy was speeding towards a base to the west that Athena and her team had scouted out earlier that day. Their objective was to elimante the target before he reached the base and continued his rebellion against Thraycia. Athena had just one bullet to end the officer's life with, a specially designed .50 caliber fragmentation round loaded into a high powered rifle that needed two people to lug around the battlefield. Athena didnt need to move it anywhere. When the target was destroyed, and he would be, the special bullet would make sure of that. The rifle would initiate a series of self destruct sequences that would ensurse the rifle was completely destroyed without revealing the sniper's position. Athena smiled and ran her tongue along her teeth as the target rapidly approached her line of sight. "150 meters and closing fast. Five seconds to fire." RJ whispered into the comm link to her. Athena whispered an acknowledement back to him as her fingered tensed on the trigger of her rifle. As the target approached, she felt everything around her start to move in slow motion, everything became very vivid to her eyes and ears. The soft rustle of the low canopy covering her and her spotter, the dust flying everywhere across the plain. Everything was bare rock on this part of Thraycia, nothing grew here anymore, not even shrubs. She could even hear her spotters slow breathing as he watched the convoy move through the plain. "Two seconds." RJ whispered. To Athena, it seemed like a very loud noise and she couldn't believe only three seconds had passed since he last spoke. She took a short deep breath in before breathing out as her finger squeezed the trigger back towards her. The complicated and intricate workings of the rifle all worked in a perfect symphony of sound as the magnetic accelerators in the rifles long barrel propelled the special bullet towards its destination, in addition to a built in mini-rocket in the back of the bullet. The projecticle was travelling at a rate of 560 meters per millisecond, covering the 3000 meter range in 5.3 milliseconds. The bullet impacted on the drivers side door, just below the window, before detonating right as it entered the drivers stomach. The APC exploded into a ball of fire that expanded large enough to encompass one of the bikes unaware as it got too close. Both vehicles kept there momentum until they crashed into a medium sized crater and disappeared from view. The last biker was caught in the resulting shrapnel from the explosion, the shards of burning metal eviserating the driver and the passenger manning the gun in the side car. Athena smiled as everything rushed back into motion for her as the high powered rifle started to destroy itself with quiet ticks and clangs. She nudged her spotter as she moved away from the rifle to set up the long range communications system. It was a simple box with a small antanae and a few dials and readouts displayed with a low amber light from within the box's housing. As RJ moved back next to her, packing up his obsevation gear, Athena keyed in the frequency to call for an extraction. "This is Echo team calling in, mission complete, we need an extraction. Over?" Athena spoke into the mic built into her helmet as she had a glove pressed against her ear to listen for the return. She didn't have to wait long before the reply came back, "This is Kilo-26 Alpha, roger Echo team. Sending in a bird to pick you up, over. Stay frosty kiddies." The operator had a strange voice, a mix between a Russian accent and a Scottish one. The resulting combination often made communication between the field command and teams rather hard to understand. Athena supposed this was the higher up's thinking when they put Jakoz in the operator seat back at base. "Roger Kilo-26, Echo team over and out." She cut off the link and twisted the dial to some random frequency in case they were discovered at the last minute, wouldn't want the enemy listening in on them. Athena checked over her assault rifle as the special rifle finished desentigrating, leaving a pile of broken parts and liquid electronics. She racked the hammer back on her rifle to load up the first tracer round and ensure everything was greased up and working properly, she glanced over at RJ as he finished doing the same. He gave her a thumbs-up and she could tell from his posture that he was smiling at her, she couldn't help but smile back and give him a thumbs-up in return. "Mission complete," she thought as they waited under the canopy for extraction. The sun was brutal that day, she thanked her suit for the AC system built into it for not the last time. RJ looked over to the west as a shimmer of light flashed across the horizon, the dropship was coming from several kilometers out from the forward base of the Empire's army. Athena grinned at the thought of getting back to base and a hot shower as she started to come out from under the canopy before RJ grabbed her arm and pulled her back, pointing at the incoming dropship. She looked back towards the west and the dropship as she zoomed in with her helmets optics to 10x magnification. Her mouth dropped open slowly as she saw that the dropships forward right engine was burning bright with fire, but that wasn't what interested and terrified her. All over the aircraft several creatures were clawing at it, trying to get inside the dropship as it sped forward. The creatures looked almost draconian in shape like the dragons of legend from ancient Earth. They had large wings affixed to their back following a chain of spines that ran from the tip of their muzzle to the tip of their tail. Their bodies were thick with pulsing muscles that powered strong limbs tipped with razor claws. Athena saw that one had already busted open the port side door of the drop ship and watched with horror as one of the crewmen was torn out of the craft and flung to the merciless ground below. Athena brought her rifle to bare along side RJ when the craft exploded about a kilometer away from their postion. One of those things must have hit a fuelline or the pilots triggered it in a last ditch effort to take the creatures down with them. But Athena saw that the majority of the creatures had taken to the sky before the craft erupted in flames. Athena took aim at one of the creatures as it flapped its wings in the air to hover and watch the dropships burning remains plummet into a crater, sending out a shower of brilliant sparks and shrapnel. RJ held up a hand to stop her before she could fire. "Hang on Athena, we need to call this in now before we get spotted," he whispered to her, she nodded in turn before winding up the long range com again and dialing in the frequency. "This is Echo team calling base, unknown hostile forces have taken down our evac., over?" She waited several long minutes before the com link burst into static in her helmet. She switched it off before looking to RJ, who was watching the skies. "We might have a problem," she said as she started to pack up all the gear she could carry and still be able to run if need be. "We have a bigger problem," said RJ as he pointed into the south. Athena turned to look in the direction he was indicating to see a massive cloud of dust and dirt hurled into the air as thousands of vehicles and creatures, like the ones that brought down the dropship, running up ramps or driving crude APCs and tanks moving toward the west, headed in the direction of the Empire's forward command. Athena tensed as she watched the massive army headed towards them at an astonishing rate, there would be no time to alert the men stationed there even if the creatures weren't jamming their transmissions. "Oh man, the shit's about to hit the fan," RJ whispered. Athena could only nod in agreement.