Chapter 25
Chapter 25
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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 25
Chapter Title: For That Handful of Silver Coins (8)
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***
“Pack Leader, reporting.”
“Yes. Any gains?”
“We discarded most of the small stuff, and from the scavengers’ corpses ahead, we secured 42 rounds of 9mm Parabellum, 33 rounds of 5.56mm NATO, 6 homemade bombs, and sundry other items...”
“Ah, that’s enough. Just grab the ammo we can use right now and ditch the rest.”
Fedor Raptor Kessling, Pack Leader of Raptor 2nd Legion, cut off his subordinate’s report on the gathered resources.
The crew managing the Nest’s supply depot always griped about ammo shortages, but today there was no need to sweat the details.
“Any enemy traces?”
“On basement level 1, four bodies dead from gunshot wounds, three estimated from ambushes. Basement level 2, likewise seven from gunshots, plus signs of a large-scale firefight.”
“Large-scale firefight... Care to be specific?”
“Yes, sir. Looks like a TNT or C4 blast went off in the auditorium next to the cafeteria. By the time we got there, hardly any live mutants were left.”
“Hmm?”
Kessling sensed something missing from the report. Something he both wanted and didn’t want to hear...
“Any bodies among the dead that were physically mangled?”
“...I don’t follow the order, sir.”
“Even a hundred-plus Type 1 mutants take real work to clear. In the chaos, randos get bitten all the time. How many bodies showed mutant attack traces?”
“...Zero.”
“Zero? Not a single one? Had they been handled?”
“Yes, sir. All had clean headshots—right through the tofu.”
“Hmm. Is that so?”
Kessling stroked his temple with a gloved hand.
It was his usual habit when deep in thought.
‘Zero scavengers taken down by mutants. Sure, every scavenger who made it here could’ve been top-tier, mutants no big deal... but the body count’s way too high for that. And the survivors even did proper mutant-prevention work on them, nice and clean.’
Stroke, stroke.
The hand that had been rubbing his temple now caressed the corner of his mouth.
His lips were curling upward.
“Looks like we’ve got some real players here.”
“Enemies, sir?”
“Yeah. No idea who they are, but they wiped out the other scavengers here and pushed inside. Then the mutants drawn by the gunfire gave them hell.”
Props for packing that much explosive, but in the end, that was it.
The blast marks were confined to that one auditorium—they’d burned through their whole supply there.
“Good news.”
“You mean their numbers are down, sir?”
“No—enemies worth the hunt. How disappointing would it be if this rare external op turned into just picking up fallen apples on the way down?”
Click. Clack!
“Yes. What is it?”
The soldier who’d arrived at crisp attention faced Kessling in the exact same posture as the one giving the report.
“Pack Leader, reporting. Basement level 2 secured. No valuable resources worth hauling back.”
“Yeah, figured as much. Anything there would’ve been swept by the first wave. Check the exits?”
“Yes, sir. Only the entrance we used.”
“No need to rush, then.”
Thud, thud.
Kessling strode down the still-warm corridor, drawing a deep breath.
Gunpowder.
Burning flesh.
The long-lost scent of the battlefield.
“Might actually get a good night’s sleep tonight. Automatic weapons up front, flamethrowers next, snipers last—head down.”
“Orders, sir?”
“Kill and burn. Only Raptors need to breathe in this sector.”
Snap!
Crisp salutes rippled through the ranks, and a black tide of violence flowed down the emergency stairs.
***
Tap, tap.
“[Enemy Spotted]”
‘They’re here!’
He tried to steady his nerves, but the sight of those uniforms had sweat beading on his palms anyway.
Uniforms pitch-black from head to toe. Masks always covering their faces. Raptor Society’s signature scale-pattern epaulets.
Among all the wasteland factions, the one that embodied “violence” above all others.
And now a splinter of it was revealing itself.
‘...The vibe inside’s shifted.’
He didn’t need eyes to know.
The sound of swallowed breaths.
The faint creak of rifle stocks gripped tight.
The combat tension leaking from inside had reached all the way here.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
‘The commander!’
Black coat. Angular hat. Five gleaming scale epaulets.
High rank obvious at a glance—the man was leading from the front.
-Snap.
‘He stopped at a suspiciously safe spot.’
The man halted in a depression beyond the hill—a low spot relative to the emergency exit, perfectly shielded from lines of fire out of the shelter.
He casually clipped a cigar between his teeth, snipped the end, lit up, and spoke.
“Greetings, friends.”
Murmurs rippled-!
‘That bastard sniffed out the ambush.’
The positioning. The brazen taunt as he strolled forward.
He already had a rough fix on the Dome troops’ locations.
Stirring came from the shelter alley—Dome’s forces looked plenty rattled.
Fwooo-
“Sometimes.”
He took a deep drag on the cigar, exhaling the smoke in a sigh-like puff as he continued.
“...I just can’t fathom what goes through people’s heads. A fact staring them plain in the face, obvious as day—yet they miss it, and hope others do too.”
He peeled off a white glove and drew a stick grenade from his coat, fiddling with the timer as he spoke.
“Simple truth, isn’t it? If folks went in, folks should come out. Bodies scattered everywhere prove someone beat us here—but when we head down, nobody’s around? What do you reckon we’d think?”
Click, tick, click.
“Might’ve bought a noisy scrap thinned their ranks...”
Whoosh-
The grenade he lobbed traced a lazy arc.
“But this pathetic ambush? It’s practically begging us to kill you.”
“Grenade! Take cover! Take cov-”
KABOOM-!
The grenade burrowed right into the panicked cluster of soldiers and blew.
Whiiiish- splat!
A Dome trooper, mid-shout, rocketed skyward and thudded down at Kessling’s feet.
He crouched personally, ripped the dog tags from the partial corpse, and held them under his nose.
Sniiiiif- haaaaa.
“Aaah, truly... truly superb. The scent of a hypocrite’s soul aflame. Folks only feel truly alive when they think they’re doing something worthwhile.”
Clink-
Snap, snap, snap, snap.
He raised a hand like a conductor toward his impeccably aligned legion behind him.
“Forward, gentlemen. Let’s burn every last one of those wretched beasts.”
Hiss- fwoooooom!
On cue, the flamethrower nozzles belched fire.
***
The Professor was seriously rattled.
He’d known the flamethrowers were coming. Known a fight would kick off.
But he hadn’t expected them to hose everything down in flames the second they arrived.
‘Goddamn it, he’d considered it, but they actually brought flamethrowers! And in a sealed space like this!’
This was basement level 3.
With all the surface buildings collapsed and vents mostly clogged, swinging something like a flamethrower around now was as good as begging to suffocate...
‘Hold up. No way those are...’
Raptors always strutted around with Darth Vader masks.
What if they weren’t cheap knockoffs—what if they served some critical function?
The Professor’s eyes locked on the mask, spotting a finger-thick hose snaking from the back to a small canister clipped to the man’s belt.
‘They’re not lighting up the enemy—they’re doing it on purpose? These lunatics... they’re gearing up for a chem attack?’
If incinerating all the oxygen counted as chem warfare, then this airtight basement level 3 might as well have been ground zero for a chem grenade.
A nightmare round with 100% kill rate against the unprepared.
“B-block that fire! Target the flamethrowers!”
Dome’s troops caught on to the ploy and ditched their caution, popping out from cover to pour fire back.
Kessling nearly snorted at the sight.
“Burn ’em and they scurry like roaches. Gentlemen, give ’em a taste—but don’t get drawn in. Hold this hillcrest, out of their direct lines, and lay down suppressing fire. Thirty minutes of O2 left—start when breathing gets tough.”
Click, click!
Bang-!
Rattatta!
“Aaaaagh!”
“Guhk!”
It was total domination.
Time. Terrain. All Raptor territory.
Dome’s soldiers were dying inch by inch, never getting to leverage their prepped kill zone.
What halted the flawless slaughter: the mutants circling nearby, drawn in by the Raptor lights and noise.
Dome’s strategy of sneaking past without killing them—keeping mutant attention elsewhere—finally paid off.
“Grrrrrr-”
“Uwooooo!”
The Professor watched the mutants lurch toward the Raptors beyond the concrete hill and slowly rose.
Opportunity. The one shot to drag them off that hill.
“V, I—we move now.”
The battle heated up, drawing scattered mutants into the thick of it, and the Professor’s group slunk along in their shadows, inching forward.
***
‘Expected some imbalance, but not a total stomp like this.’
From his perspective, the ideal was mutual annihilation between Dome and Raptor forces.
It’d deny Dome the site, spare him a Raptor death, and if luck held, he could scavenge something amid the chaos.
But at this rate, they’d gain zilch and just suffocate when the O2 ran out.
The Professor approached Ian, who clutched his favorite rifle, gasping for air.
“I—listen up. Want to live? We gotta shove those hilltop bastards off.”
“Huff... even a one-eyed freak could see that.”
“And to do it, lure ’em under that concrete ridgeline.”
Dome wasn’t total chum right now, but they weren’t helpless.
Give ’em their house specialty—urban combat—and things could turn.
“Any of your gear usable right now?”
“Few grenades... but pointless. Those outfits ain’t standard issue. Blast’ll hurt direct, but shrapnel? Laughable. Best bet’s something like that auditorium C4, point-blank. But electronic needs wire for range—can’t chuck far without. Rest won’t reach.”
“No options...”
“Told ya. When those moles show, only play’s a suicide bomb rush.”
“That’s not advice! Who’s strapping the bomb—you? Me? Or...”
“Grraaaaa-”
.
.
.
.
“Oof.”
In that instant, all three heads nodded as one, no need to ask who.
***
The trio slipped into the shelter alley while Dome, Raptor, and mutants fixated on each other.
“Listen—our move pisses off Raptors, sure, but Dome ain’t allies. Goal’s escape, no hooks from either side.”
KABOOM!
Rattle-rattle-!
They dodged the flying debris, hunkering lower as they burrowed deeper.
Dome ambush turf now—utmost caution.
They fanned out carefully, scanning the spots where Dome troops had holed up.
“Found it?”
“I—negative.”
“Shit, no H. Head’s gone.”
“V—got it. Corpse. Clean kill. Bleed-out.”
“Nice!”
The Professor and Ian hustled to Bex’s side.
A gut-shot body, blood still warm—fresh kill.
“I—set?”
“Industrial dynamite, three five-stick bundles. Rig ’em all here?”
“...Yeah. All of it. No shot like now, with Type 1s drawing eyes.”
Ian hastily bundled the dynamite fuses and strapped the lot to the corpse’s lower back.
“Gr... grrrr...”
“Verdammter Abschaum! It’s reanimating!”
Bex eyed the twitching body, face tinged with regret.
“Happens—you squared for this? Using a dead man’s husk ain’t light work. Gonna haunt your dreams.”
“Hey, we’re helping ’em get revenge. Wasteland code: botched kill? Finish clean. Nightmares hit, toss ’em rice balls. Survival first.”
Huff-!
Ian shouldered the corpse—just starting to mutate—and shuffled toward the wire’s lead end.
“Cover me tight!”
“On it!”
Click-
The Professor racked the shotgun Ian had irritably shoved him earlier, and damn if it didn’t hit sentimental.
Forgot this feel after pipe shotguns.
Trust in the weapon.
Like an extension of his limbs.
Not just shoving foes back, but dropping ’em sure—the raw power to—
Bang-
Fwoooooooosh!
Po...wer?
“What the—Metal Joe! What’d you give me?!”
The Professor had loaded a round from Ian’s pocket on autopilot and fired—and recoiled in horror at the flame wall erupting in his face.
“Kuhhahaha! What else—12-gauge dragon’s breath! Like it? Wife still want refund?!”
The Professor gaped, speechless, as the mutant’s chest blew open and ignited from his shot.
Pfft-!
“Eek!”
‘Focus—focus!’
Pfft-
“Ow! Cover right!”
“Who told ya to pop up showing off!! V!! Left alley—two mutants! One Dome! I! Hit?!”
“Grazed! Can’t push more! He’s almost up!”
The Professor gauged the gap to the Raptors as the corpse began twitching in earnest.
Thirty meters. Doable?
‘Not “doable”—it has to be. I! Give it everything! Fail and we’re dead! Hurl it!’
“Hup! RAAAAA!”
With a furious kiai, the near-mutant corpse sailed through the air.
Not far, but providence smiled—it plopped behind another Type 1 corpse, out of sight.
“Got it!”
“Now what?”
“What else!”
The Professor bolted toward Bex, locked in a firefight with a Dome trooper, and yelled back at Ian.
“Pray! Hope our marathon man scores!”
***