Gideon’s first strike missed the mark but scored a deep gash against one of the armor plates covering the alien’s back. It spun around, deflecting his follow-up attack before blinking out of existence just as Red came crashing down with his sword. The blade thudded into the floor, dinting the metal plating as Red cursed in annoyance.

  The Stalker had blinked away behind Mia, but she ducked out of the way as it swiped out toward her chest, narrowly avoiding the attack. Mia tried to bring her gun to bear but the Stalker was too fast, moving with lighting speed and ducking behind her before she had a chance to react.

  Red and Gideon were both running to her aid as the Stalker’s talons shot out of Mia’s chest, her back arcing as she cried out in pain. Blood poured from the wound and Red roared as he thrust the sword at the attacker and charged forward.

  The Stalker vanished again, appearing behind Book and slicing a neat cut through the soldier’s arm as he ducked down and tried to pull his weapon, still clutching Bullseye to his chest as he narrowly avoided a second strike from the enemy.

  Gideon saw the problem clearly enough. He’d watched this scene play out a thousand times in a hundred different feeds back on earth. This was where a rogue excelled.

  One on one, Red might be able to take the Stalker, but it was simply too quick to catch and never stayed in one place for more than a second. The trick wasn’t to go chasing the rogue as it blinked from place to place, but to predict where it was going to appear next and position yourself so that you could deliver a death blow the moment it appeared.

  Gideon watched as Mia fell to the floor, blood gushing from her chest while she tried to heal herself with a spell. Red was still charging after the Stalker, too slow to do anything more than trash the surrounding corridor with savage swipes of his massive sword. Book managed to get a few shots off, but he was badly wounded too and had only a pistol which wasn’t much good against the Stalker’s plate amor.

  Attempting to get ahead of the deadly assassin, Gideon closed his eyes, concentrating on the strange sensation that had come over him when he’d first felt the enemy rogue nearby. It was a risky move considering that the Stalker could run him through while he was trying to concentrate, but it was the only way he could focus. He also reasoned that, at least if the enemy assassin stabbed him, he'd have a chance of returning the favor, given that the Stalker would need to get up close and personal.

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  “Fuck!” Red shouted, shoulder barging a wall where the Stalker had been moments earlier. “Little help, dude!” He blurted, frowning at Gideon who was still standing with his eyes closed, concentrating on the odd sensation that indicated a strange kind of pattern at work within the Stalker’s strategy.

  “Dude! For fuck’s sake!” Red shouted.

  Gideon opened his eyes, running to a spot a few feet to his left and crouching low with his curved talon dagger ready. His Shadow Step ability wasn’t ready to use, but Stealth Strike had no cooldown, and he reasoned that it might still work if the Stalker wasn’t expecting attack.

  “DUDE!” Red roared.

  Gideon ignored the tank’s shouting, reading the shifting pattern as the Stalker shifted from place to place. A moment before the enemy approached him, he pushed off from the wall, jumping in a horizontal line toward a space three feet to his left and triggering Stealth Strike at exactly the moment the Stalker blinked in front of him.

  Instead of facing away from Gideon, as he’d expected, the Stalker was right in front of him, inches away as his talon blade slid into the enemy soldier’s body. It slipped through the gap between the creature’s armor, not quite triggering the full effects of the Stealth Strike ability but doing enough damage to cause the Striker to shriek in pain and frustration.

  Clinging to the talon with one hand, Gideon summoned the shorter throwing blade he’d taken from the first Striker he’d encountered and jammed it into the enemy’s neck just below the helmet. With two blades stuck into the Stalker’s body he straddled the alien like a bull rider, ignoring the claws raking his back and holding on for dear life.

  Red came running over, turning his sword so that the pummel end of the bone face the pair. He jammed it forward into the face of the Stalker, cracking the chitinous armor and repeating the blow a second and third time.

  Gideon twisted both blades, feeling them released as he was hurled to one side. Out of the corner of his eyes he saw Red bludgeon the Stalker with repeated blows from his sword, using it more like a baseball bat than a bladed weapon.

  Chunks of chitin armor cracked and broke apart, flying left and right as he continued to batter the enemy. Once a large enough opening had been made in the Stalker’s helmet, Red shoved the alien down onto the floor and drove the point of his sword through the creature’s head and into the metal plating beneath.

  As Gideon got to his feet once more, his back bleeding profusely and a gore covered blade in each hand, he saw Red panting as he lay on top of the dead Stalker, leaning with his back against the oversized sword that stood like a monolith jutting out of the dead alien’s head. Red gave Gideon the thumbs up gesture and nodded.

  “Nice one,” he breathed, panting heavily. “You’re a regular frigging ninja, bro!”