“I can see the beach up ahead!” Srell said loud enough for his teammates to hear him.

  “Finally.” Lorias said while he gripped his PAW tight.

  They’d made it through the musty jungle, having skulked about to avoid any enemy patrols. Though their armor rendered them invisible to most forms of thermal imaging, they still had to move in a careful and coordinated manner to prevent their motion from being detected. They stuck to the most overgrown areas they could find so that their bodies were as occluded as possible. They’d simply followed Ursun, who in turn was being led by the map displayed on the screen on his arm.

  The air was hot and humid, as was typical of the tropical region that they found themselves in. The size of the small island in the middle of the ocean, not even shown on most maps of ?ba, surprised RED-1. They’d been walking cautiously through the tropical forest for over twenty minutes. Each of them was beginning to feel the strain of their mission wearing them down, even with the temperature regulation and ease of movement that their body armor provided.

  Jaik was the most tired of them all, as he’d carried the mysterious young man on his shoulder for what felt like a kilometer with little rest. The thought of finally being able to rest aboard the Titian spurred them on, but they knew that respite wouldn’t come easily.

  “Enemy contact!” Leanna said in a loud whisper, causing her and her team to crouch low within the greenery immediately. “They’re on the beach directly ahead of us, and they’ve set up anti-air artillery. The ship can’t scoop us up until we get rid of these guys.” Leanna explained their situation as it was told to her by their ship’s co-pilot.

  The pilot had the ship hovering in the air high above them to provide tactical support and to avoid detection. The co-pilot maintained the line of communication between RED-1 and the Titian. To avoid their radio communication from being intercepted and decoded, Leanna and the Titian utilized a form of bio-encryption that kept their messages undecipherable to their enemy's electronic equipment. By using protein chains as encryption keys, it essentially became mathematically impossible to decrypt them without knowing the protein chains ahead of time.

  Ursun and the rest of his group were still under the cover of trees, several yards away from the occupied beach where the Queen’s military force was waiting in ambush. The force hailed from the Kingdom, the Queen’s personal nation to the southeast of the island. The soldiers had wasted no time in setting up a small mobile position exactly where the Red Wolves were headed. Ursun was sure that they’d tracked their movements through the jungle. But the mercenaries had planned for that possibility.

  “Are there any more of the queenies nearby?” Ursun asked Leanna, who began scanning all visible and non-visible wavelengths around them with her powerful glasses.

  “Nope, just the soldiers on the beach, sir. And they don’t appear to be headed this way.“ Leanna said confidently.

  “Alright, it’s howling time.” Ursun said with a wild smile on his face. “Jaik, lay the target down and wait here until we’re done. I’ll signal to you when it’s safe to bring him to the retrieval point.”

  Jaik nodded silently to his commander, and did as he ordered. Jaik gently laid the slumbering man onto a soft patch of grass, and sat beside him to watch over their target. The man’s small nude body had been sweating for some time, and his skin glistened in the sunlight while he remained motionless on his back. Jaik’s eyes danced across the man’s figure, checking for any cuts or scrapes from their trek through the jungle. Jaik was astonished when he didn’t find any signs of even a minor injury.

  With a waving motion of his hand, Ursun signaled for the rest of his team to duck down and begin crawling along the underbrush of the wooded area they were still in. They were on slightly higher ground than the beach, so they could make out their enemy even while they crawled covertly towards them. After making it to a rocky outcrop at the edge of the tree line, they took a moment to analyze their enemy’s formation and numbers. The mercenaries were only about forty meters from the soldiers.

  “Looks like twenty of them down there, all cyborgs, with plenty of firepower already set up.” Ursun said, noting the golden lines that ran down the cheeks of the soldiers’ faces.

  “And of course they’re wearing that creepy-looking self-repairing body armor.” Srell then groaned quietly while looking over the slightly-padded black skintight suits that their enemies donned.

  “Some of them have portable driver rifles. Those things can shoot through just about anything, like these trees. We won’t be protected by our armor or any form of cover.” Lorias noted calmly while keeping his blue eyes fixed on the long barrels of the silvery two-handed weapons he spoke of.

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  “I see two automated turrets, an automated anti-air gun, and a hover-drone. They’re serious.” Leanna added.

  “Get the howlers out. Lorias, shoot yours at the mobile turret on the left. Srell, shoot yours at the mobile turret on the right. Leanna, shoot yours at the largest group of soldiers at your one o’clock. I’ll shoot at the other group with mine, the group at your ten o’clock, Leanna.” Ursun ordered.

  “Sir, the noise will surely…” Leanna started to speak.

  “Tell the Titian to be ready to swoop down in five minutes. We’ll use the confusion and disorientation caused by the howler blasts to take out the anti-air gun and any remaining forces.” Ursun spoke quickly without pausing to take a breath.

  “Yes, sir.” Leanna said with a hint of relief before sending a quick message to their ship.

  Each of the four of them withdrew a small tube attachment for their PAWs, as well as a silver, egg-shaped projectile, from their gear belts. They connected the tubes to their PAWs, and then inserted the silver ammo into the tubes. Each of them aimed and then fired their weapons immediately after Ursun fired his. When the projectiles made contact, they each created a powerful spherical shockwave that essentially pulverized anything within their blast radius. Ten of the soldiers were caught in the blasts, and were killed by the high energy noise that ripped through their bodies. The overpressure from the sound waves was so potent that it even damaged the metallic construction of the turrets, rendering them inoperable.

  A howling sound could be heard at the time of each detonation, leading to the weapon’s unique name. The mercenaries each only carried one of the potent weapons each mission, as the howlers were very difficult to mass-produce.

  “With me!” Ursun yelled before getting up from the ground and wielding his coilgun.

  He was soon firing high-speed metal balls at the remaining soldiers, holding his oversized weapon as steady as he could. Ursun’s tall, bulky figure should have been an easy target for the augmented enemy soldiers, but none of their advanced firearms could fire a bullet that would strike him. Ursun knew that the key to avoiding being shot was to stay moving. He charged across the beach with a speed that surprised even his allies, despite carrying the nearly 15 kilogram coilgun in his meaty hands. Leanna, Srell and Lorias were close behind their leader.

  Leanna shot at the hover-drone as it zoomed across the sky to intercept RED-1, knocking it out of the air before it could begin firing at them from its aerial position. When the spherical drone fell to the sand, golden striations along its surface began to glow. Leanna chucked a grenade at the drone before its self-repairing technology allowed it to take flight again. A small blast followed a few seconds later, sending fragments of the silvery machine flying across the beach around it. A few larger bits of it that remained started to glow with a golden light, but that glow quickly faded. There was only so much its repair functions could do.

  Lorias and Srell rushed towards the car-sized anti-air artillery, shooting at whatever soldiers tried to stop them. The Red Wolves’ blitz attack caught the Queen’s forces completely off-guard, and the mercenaries dispatched the small contingent quickly and efficiently. Srell took down the most soldiers, being the team’s best marksman. He reveled in the violence, going so far as to pull out his shotgun while he wielded his PAW in his other hand. Srell shot to kill with his PAW and then blasted the armored soldiers in the head with his shotgun to make sure that their tech wouldn’t revive them. The shotgun was so powerful that its shells ripped through the notoriously-durable suits of the Kingdom soldiers, essentially craterized the beach where the shots made contact.

  Lorias simply focused on getting to the artillery, which began to shimmer as it finally detected the presence of the Titian in the sky above them all. Lorias threw a fragmentation grenade at the anti-air gun before he reached it, hoping to knock it out of order just long enough to delay its firing. With a small explosion, the artillery’s lights flickered before the familiar golden glow began from its own aurous striations. Srell and Lorias soon made it to the device right before it resumed its activation. They quickly deactivated the anti-air weapon, severing its power supply and destroying its onboard computer with a shotgun blast.

  “That should do it!” Srell yelled to Ursun and Leanna once he and Lorias left the broken machine.

  “Clear!” Leanna yelled after shooting the last surviving soldier before Ursun could aim his unwieldy coilgun at them.

  Ursun gave each of his three teammates a congratulatory nod before making his way back to the wooded area to begin escorting Jaik and their target. Ursun was glad that their team still had what it took to take down their world’s premier military forces, though he couldn’t help but think that it had been too easy.

  “Jaik, the coast is clear.” Ursun radioed his youngest teammate.

  “Roger. On our way.” Jaik replied with a wave of his hand, barely in eye shot of Ursun.

  Just when Jaik was pulling the sleeping man up onto his shoulder again, a shot rang out from a shaded area deeper within the forest. A hot pain seared through Jaik’s right thigh, and he fell hard onto his side. He tried to look down at his leg to see the extent of the damage, but another shot loudly echoed through the forest before he could tilt his head downwards. The second shot was fired closer to him, and just nearly missed his ear. Jaik frantically began to twist his body around to face the young man he’d been charged to protect, ready to pull him out of the line of fire. But to Jaik’s further shock, the young man was gone.

  Right when Jaik started to look around the area for the man, he felt a strong arm yank him across the leafy ground with impressive speed. Jaik looked up and expected to see Ursun rescuing him. But Jaik’s mouth dropped open when he instead saw his previously-asleep ward dragging him along. The arm that the mystery man was pulling Jaik with had become extremely muscular, and bulged with every step he took. Jaik also saw that the man’s eyes glowed with a bright green color. The man stared ahead towards the beach with fearless focus, even with more shots firing off behind him.

  In a matter of seconds, Jaik had been dragged out of the forest and onto the beach. The strange man left Jaik at Ursun’s feet, and then stared at the mercenary team’s leader. Ursun, who was pointing his coilgun directly at the man, didn’t know how to respond, especially when he realized that the man was looking at him with eyes of gratitude. Before either of them could speak, several gunshots began to be fired their way.

  The mystery man reflexively turned around and raised his hands in front of himself. His eyes flashed a bright white, and his right arm returned to its normal shape. A wide, high wall of translucent white light appeared in front of his hands and stopped the barrage of bullets that threatened to kill him, Ursun, and Jaik. Ursun stood dumbfounded at the new development that unfolded before him.

  “What the…” Ursun started to say.

  But before Ursun could finish, the man in front of him turned his head around enough to make eye contact with Ursun, and then said, “My name is Prism, and I won’t let them hurt any of you again.”