NationStates Jolt Archive

Ghosts of the Clan Wars


“God money’s not looking for a cure. God money’s not concerned about the sick among the pure. God money lets go dancing on the backs of the bruised. God money’s not the one to choose. No you can’t take it. No, no you can’t take it. No you can’t take that away from me.

Head like a hole. Black as your soul. I’d rather die than give you control.

Bow down before the one you serve. You’re going to get what you deserve.”

Head like a hole, by Nine Inch Nails




The autumn sun had done little to burn away the cold of an early morning in the mountainous Koorlon Province. In the mining town of High Spaar, the next shift of workers was on already on their way to the nearby titanium mines. Located in the northeast of the Indomitable Borderlands, to the west of the source of the Radiant River, High Spar was one of the richest sources of titanium in the Nation States World.

Titanium was the backbone upon which the Grendels built their high tech industries, military and civilian. The expensive chemical baths used to separate titanium from the ore made the cost of the precious metal too expensive for common usage. The Grendels had long exploited the secret of electrolysis to transform titanium dioxide to metal. The process was very similar to how aluminum was extracted from ore and it was a wonder to the mining companies why so few foreign mining companies had figured this out.

Teahouses, convenience stores, and delis were humming with activity, as workers grabbed last minute sustenance before heading off to the mines. Most of the gnolls responsible for the town’s infrastructure and small businesses were still in their homes getting ready for work.

Juun was an officer of the law, an officer of Borderland Security. This far into the mountains was one of the few places left in the Indomitable Borderlands that still felt like a frontier. The border here with Solid Water was lightly patrolled. There was little need of even the border monitoring stations, to scan the airspace, but one couldn’t be too careful when you were protecting some of the richest mineral resources of the Nation States World. The Barrier Peaks were all but impenetrable even to most aircraft. Few who weren’t attached to the mining companies came this far into the mountains, except for the infrequent traffic of climbing expeditions and big game hunters.

High Spaar was as remote a community as you could find anywhere in Wysteria. Here, you could find none of the imported luxury goods from alien peoples and that was just the way the locals liked it. There was no sense here that there even was an outside world, except for the cars at the railhead waiting to take away the mountain’s rich resources. Like half the police in this town, Juun was coming off a bloody tour of duty in Isla Vista. Since the Grendels purchased the colony from Santa Barbara, they’d been in a vicious battle with the local crime syndicate and street gangs. Things were now quieter, much quieter than the state of urban warfare when the Grendels first hit the streets shooting. Three sets of trashed body armour later, Juun was back in the Indomitable Borderlands, taking in the mountain air of High Spaar. He really did miss the baked confections and coffee, but had grudgingly settled with the bitter mountain root tea that the miners drank. It was vile stuff, but the medic told him it cut the edge off altitude sickness and that was good enough for him.

Other than breaking up a brawl or duel between agitated miners, the most demanding part of his work was doing search and rescue work with the local Rangers. It was a quiet posting, a well-earned holiday from the blood soaked streets of Isla Vista.

When Juun arrived at the security station, a courier rushed into the building just ahead of him. A care package from home? New kit? The security officer was certain he’d discover what it was soon enough. It wasn’t like much else was happening in High Spaar.

A moment later the ground floor of the building erupted into flames, blowing the windows out. The flames reached Juun so fast he didn’t even hear the explosion. The frantic sirens of approaching emergency vehicles soon joined the howls of the stricken.


Map of the Indomitable Borderlands of the Grendels
http://wysteria.diamondq.com/Wysteria/Nations/grendels.html

The helicopter laboured its way to the landing pad at High Spaar. The pilot had difficulties maneuvering in the thin air, but finally managed to put his chopper down without too much drama. A moment later, a gnoll exited the helicopter, leaving the pilot and loadmaster to go through their shutdown procedures. Another gnoll, carrying a couple of steaming, disposable cups, walked out onto the heliport to greet the new arrival.

“First time in High Spaar?” asked detective Toor of Borderland Security loudly, so he was heard over the helicopter engine.

“Yes,” yelled back agent Graal of the Borderlands Intelligence Bureau. “I’ve heard it takes a couple of days to acclimatize to the altitude.”

“Drink this,” advised Toor, handing the agent one of the cups. “Mountain root tea. Takes the edge of altitude sickness. Tastes like ass, but the miners swear by it.”

“I don’t normally drink ass this early in the morning, but today I’ll make an exception,” laughed Graal, as they walked away from the helicopter, eying the cup of dark tea with suspicion.

The two of them made their way to a waiting off road vehicle, designed for work in the mountains.

“I saw pictures of the security station,” stated agent Graal. “We’ll get the cowards responsible for this.”

“Yes, that’s what we do isn’t it,” nodded detective Toor, as they got into the security vehicle.

They drove to the security station or what was left of it. The airtight design of the building had doomed all of the people inside to instant death from the concussion of the blast, before the explosion found some weaker seams in the walls to escape through. Some vehicles in the parking lot were tossed on their side and were nothing more than burned out wrecks. The secondary fire spread to gut one of the neighbouring buildings. A couple dozen gnolls were now on site, sifting through the wreckage, looking for clues and bodies.

“They went a bit heavy on the explosives didn’t they?” said agent Graal, looking at the damage.

“Engineer report says they used just enough to breach the walls from the inside,” reported Toor. “Whoever did this knew what they were doing and had access to some very high end supplies.”

“Traces of Necroplast,” nodded Graal, remembering a note from a report. “It’s a restricted material, Grendel military and allies only.”

“Not restricted enough from where I’m standing.”

“The Bureau is concerned about this being the beginning of a wave of ZaKommian state sponsored terrorism,” stated agent Graal, his face wrinkled up after another sip of bitter tea.

Everyone had concerns about ZaKommian terrorism these days. Whether it was directed from Lorina’s revolutionary government in ZaKommia itself; the breakaway colony of the Sacred Skull; or fragmented terrorist groups from the old regime of ZaKommia mattered little to the victims of terrorist attacks. ZaKommian terrorist fears ran so high that whenever a bomb went off they were blamed, whether or not it was true. The Grendels had closed their borders to ZaKommians of every political stripe. No trade flowed between their two nations or with the breakaway colony, the Sacred Skull. Their only contact was when they were on opposite sides of wars in other people’s nations, not a rare occurrence.

“They’ve got fur in their brain,” said Toor, unimpressed. “There hasn’t been a single documented case of a human in High Spaar, ever. There were some dwarves from Marldeep up here a couple years ago working on the new rail line, but that’s been it for foreigners. I think we can rule out foreign terrorism.”

“Borderland Intelligence Bureau isn’t about to rule out anything at this point of the investigation.”

“Figure it out. Even gnolls from other parts of the Indomitable Borderlands are foreigners to the locals. The mountain clans don’t like change and they don’t make strangers feel welcome,” pointed out detective Toor.

“That would be us.”

“Right,” stated Toor. “To the gnolls here we’re almost as alien as the humans.”

“Shiny,” grinned Graal, sarcastically. “That’ll make our job easier here.”

“Detective!” yelled one of the gnolls swarming over the ruins of the security station. “I’ve got something for you.”

The two bounded over to where the crouching gnoll beckoned to them from.

“Look what I found,” grinned the gnoll, holding up a scorched piece of metal.

“What is it?” asked Graal, peering at the tiny, twisted piece of burnt metal.

“Detonator,” stated Toor, grimly, after a quick examination of the fragment. “It’s domestic. We’re looking for a bomb maker who’s ex-Kill Pack or combat engineer.”

“How?”

“Because I’m ex-Kill Pack,” replied Toor. “I’ve seen a detonator fragment enough times after the fact to know what I’m looking at.”

“Shiny, Grendels blowing up Grendels,” said agent Graal, uncomfortably.

“Bad dreams, agent. Bad dreams,” stated detective Toor, lifting his gaze from the fragment to take in the ruins of the security station again.

Jaamhar was returning from another long day at the fish processing plant, in the city of Piik, located on the east coast of Blood Island. Boats came from all over the east coast of Blood Island to offload their catch here. The generous breakwater and seawall were all that kept the aptly named Sea of Storms from regularly thrashing the fishing community on a regular basis. Jaamhar was the shift foreman at the Uber Fish Cannery. That meant taking crap from supervisors when the supervisor got heat from his boss.

The Uber family corporate holdings included the Uber Fish Canneries and Uber Mega Malls, which were the ugly stepchildren of the Grendel corporate elite. Jaamhar couldn’t help but think that the power struggles and occasional murders amongst the Uber family accounted for no small share of their grief in the market. The Uber family was constantly at odds with other corporations for the destruction of fish spawning grounds and damming of fish bearing rivers. It made them less popular in the Grendels inner circles of corporate power, but they remained a powerful family, not to be ignored. Still, as long as the Grendel fisheries harvested the sea of life and he did his job, Jaamhar would do all right.

Jaamhar had a cousin who recently signed on as crew on a crab fishing boat, operating out of a fishing town on Keel Island. He often wondered if one day, his cousin’s boat would stray into ZaKommian waters, never to be heard from again. The money in crab fisheries called on the crews to take a lot of risks and if the ocean didn’t take you after a few years, you could be a rich gnoll.

Tired, Jaamhar stopped in at Booze For U, for a six-pack of Bitter Harvest Laager. He lived easy walking distance from the plant, one of the few who didn’t drive to work. Some coworkers whispered that it was because his truck had been repossessed, even though it sat in his driveway, plainly visible to most commuting workers.

“Tough day at the plant, Jaamhar,” grinned Maarl, who did brisk business managing the Booze For U store.

“I feel so covered in fish, I swear there’s a pack of sea otters following me home,” growled the gnoll, putting his purchase down on the counter.

“Good money in pelts,” mused Maarl, ringing in the purchase.

When Jaamhar got home the first thing he noticed was that his mate had driven the truck into the driveway, instead of backing in like he always told her to do. The extra money she made working at a local office was nice, but he wished she’d learnt to park properly. He hated backing into traffic on the road. The second thing he noticed was the damned pups left their toys all over the front yard again. Jaamhar walked across the yard, kicking the nearest toy, on his way to the door. Some days he felt that he went to work at the fish plant so that he could have some order in his life, to offset the chaos of life at home.

He walked inside and BNN was blasting through the house.

“What’s going on?” he yelled overtop of the broadcaster from the Borderland News Network.

“News,” came the loud reply from his mate.

“I got that,” growled Jaamhar, walking into the living room to see the family gathered round the eighty inch plasma screen, before catching himself suddenly mesmerized by what he saw.

“Again,” started the serious sounding broadcaster, “BNN has learned that the Sons of the Fire have claimed responsibility for last week’s bombing of a security station in High Spaar. Officials from Borderland Security and the Borderland Intelligence Bureau have confirmed that the source is genuine. In reaction, the Corporate Ministry moved swiftly to declare the Sons of the Fire an outlaw organization. Anyone associated with the group is now subject to immediate arrest. Stay tuned for BNN for the best news team in the Borderlands or Wysteria.”

“Shiny,” growled Jaamhar, opening a beer and taking a sip. “A bunch of maniacs have declared war on their own people.”

“I’m sure it’s just changes in society pressuring conservative elements into acts of protest,” stated Yaarya.

“Those murdering whores bombed their own people!” yelled Jaamhar. “I’m supposed to feel sorry for them? They should hang the bunch of them in the square from hooks!”

“Mate of mine, the pups are listening.”

“They should be,” growled Jaamhar. “These monsters are trying to destroy us just because they aren’t calling the shots. If we don’t do something about it they’ll be shooting our pups in the streets before we know it.”

Haymaar scrambled down the rugged hillside, hauling his heavy chainsaw at his side, with its seventy-inch blade bobbing out in front of him as he moved. It was a Stiihl saw, because his father had used a Stiihl saw and that was good enough for him. He’d made a few custom modifications to his saw, to increase its power, and as long as the trees fell the logging company didn’t give a damn. It was his own hide if the gorram thing sawed his legs off.

The faller was up in the foothills of the Barrier Peaks, close to the Northern Dire Bear Hunting Preserve. This far into the wilds of the Koorlon Province, a gnoll had to have his wits about him for the more dangerous creatures that might consider him a morsel. The giant eagles weren’t too much of a concern. They were more of a hazard to livestock, wary of gnolls who were carrying anything that might be a weapon. The dire bears mostly stayed away from the fallers, machines, and the camps because they didn’t like the noise, mostly. Night wolves and dire wolverines were enough of a problem that they had the camp surrounded by electric wire and they'd hired on armed security to patrol the perimeter. They had to keep the camp’s garbage in heavy, sealed containers. It was the only way to dissuade scavengers of all sizes that the camp wasn’t the best place around to eat at, before they accumulated enough waste to burn in the incinerators.

It was still warm in the late autumn, lugging his giant chainsaw through the woods. Haymaar panted, his long tongue hanging out, taking great satisfaction whenever a breeze found him in the brush. He wore Dural faller’s pants to deflect any contact with his saw and they were heavy. He knew that some fallers didn’t bother with the safety pants, but his father told him that only an idiot didn’t protect himself properly if he planned to make a life in the woods. Sometimes a rock would get picked up inside a tree as it grew and when you hit it with your chainsaw it would fly back at you like a demon possessed. There were enough hazards to weed out the stupid in the wilderness: using a chainsaw and working around heavy machinery all day sufficed for some. The helmet he wore, with the folding down ear protection, also caused him to heat up more under the autumn sun. But with the winds that came ashore from the Sea of Storms to lash out at the mountains, branches would drop from high above in the trees at anytime, and you had to protect yourself. They were known to silently kill anyone not prepared.

Standing at the forefront of the effort to push back the wilderness, with a chainsaw in your hands and the heavy machinery of the Grendel’s industrial might at your back was hard, dangerous work, but Haymaar loved it here. He was not born of the cities and had been raised in the logging camps to follow after his father. Too old to hoist the great chainsaw anymore, his father now drove a truck for the logging company. It was a job for the semi-retired loggers that the company was impressed enough with to keep on the payroll. No matter how menial a job was done by the older loggers of the past, theirs was a place of honour in the tribe of the logging camp.

“Haymaar,” yelled another treefaller, descending from a nearby patch of forest.

Haymaar raised his paw to wave to the other faller, now walking towards him. Waaalar was from the city and his chainsaw was not made by Stiihl. If he lived through the falling season without sawing his own head off, then maybe the company might have a resource that was valuable to them in the years to come. Even if he didn’t use his saw like a veteran of the woods at least he was strong. Waaaler puffed a bit to catch up to Haymaar and held his paw out to him, giving him the secret handshake of the Sons of the Fire.

“There’s a special meeting tonight,” whispered Waaalar, looking around them as if he expected someone from the Borderland Intelligence Bureau to be lurking behind a tree.

“There’s always a special meeting these days,” growled Haymaar, knowing full well that no one was nearby.

“You’ll be there, right?” asked Waaalar, now wondering if they'd been overheard.

“Of course I’ll be there,” snapped Haymaar.

He was his father’s son, a member of the Sons of the Fire like his father and his father before him. He wasn’t like any of the radical members that had moved into the organization in the last few years though. Members like Waaalar brought a new energy to the secret society, but Haymaar couldn’t say that he thought it was a good thing. Haymaar sometimes thought this new subculture thought more of secret handshakes and meetings than the traditions they protected.

They continued walking and Waaalar started back with a growl when the bush beside them erupted into loud movement.

“It’s a brush thrasher bird,” stated Haymaar, a bit embarrassed to be in the company of Waaalar, even if the only company was an amused bird thrashing around in the bush.

“How could a bird?” yammered Waaalar, still holding his chainsaw between the bush and himself.

“It’s trying to scare you off, like the big dumb predator that you are,” laughed Haymaar.

The two continued down the slope, halfway down into the valley. That was where the truck waited to drive them back to the camp. Haymaar looked over at Waaalar again. It would be a miracle if he even lasts the month, smiled the tree faller.

It was always most dangerous at night, here deep into the muddy waters of the southern Boneyard Marsh. In the south marshes civilization had less of a hold on the watery lands and the gnolls too were a bit wilder. Jukaal’s marsh boat had a silenced hydrogen cell engine. It wasn’t that Jukaal was particularly concerned over spewing fuel into the marsh. It was that he was obsessed about making too much noise, as his boat gliding across the wetlands. He also traveled without the use of any illumination to light his way. He had even had his engine heat shielded to reduce its infrared signature. Jukaal was involved in one of the riskiest business ventures available in the Indomitable Borderlands. He was a smuggler in a state where crime was almost non-existent and always mindful that the powers that be considered him their lawful prey.

Back in the days of the Corporate Council the Grendels had moved from brutal regime to brutal regime. Assassination had been so common an expression that if nobody was trying to kill you your colleagues might consider you a failure. Law enforcement had still been harsh, but a careful gnoll could still make a good living as a smuggler in the Boneyard Marsh and profit from all the chaos.

Yarooo’s Corporate Ministry changed all of that. Only a handful of smugglers still remained after the security crackdown that followed Yarooo’s coup de tat. Borderland Security was beefed up, including additional security boats that patrolled the marshes. There was even camouflaged remote cameras set to activate for certain movement types that would focus on smuggling activity. The cameras were monitored by a Borderland Security station, which could coordinate the movement of security boats to wherever they were needed. He’d even heard that some of the marsh hawks were fitted with cameras, transmitting to screens watched by agents of the state, and he didn’t doubt it. Surveillance planes crossed the sky seeking those engaged in any unusual activity. If that wasn’t enough there were even satellites in orbit over the Indomitable Borderlands spying on their own people. Potential terrorism from Zakommia was the official focus of Borderland Security on the southern frontier, but that didn't make it any easier for smugglers like him to make a living. To Jukaal it just seemed overly intrusive and more than a bit paranoid. Most of his colleagues from the good old days were now dead; rotting in jails somewhere; or had moved their business to other countries. During the time of the Clan Wars it had been a great time for a smuggler to be alive, but not now.

If that wasn’t enough to cause early retirement for a smuggler the Boneyard Marshes were enough all by themselves. The Grendels had encroached less on the southern fens for a reason. They were full of baneful creatures of every type imaginable. Poisonous snakes slipped through the waters, swimming between muddy clumps of land. Borderland gators were in the waters hunting fish and anything else they could get their jaws clamped down on. He’d heard that some monstrous laboratory creations had escaped from the Gen Soup Corporation and begun mixing with the local gator population. It was great for attracting bold hunters, who came into to the marshes for sport, but it was very bad for the gnolls actually living there. Fresh water mud sharks prowled the waters, mostly as scavengers, but used the murky waters to ambush beavers and deer. Giant marsh owls were only active at night as the area’s alpha predator and no one was foolish enough to bother them during the day. Ten years ago he remembered when a smuggler got picked right off the deck of a boat by a giant marsh owl. The steel mesh netting over the deck was partly to keep them out. There were a number of voracious scavengers that only became active at night. Night was also the time when smugglers were most active, so Jukaal always carried guns and grenades on board for his self-protection. He also ran an electrical field around the boat that mimicked the current of a marsh eel, to discourage predators.

With so many things in the capitalist super power readily available on the open market, there really wasn’t much of a black market in the Indomitable Borderlands of the Grendels. Other than the economic sanctions against ZaKommia, the Grendels traded with almost anyone and everyone, and ZaKommia didn’t have much of anything anybody wanted anyways, except maybe their dwindling gold reserves. That and the ZaKommians were crazy like a fox and generally untrustworthy, even for smugglers to deal with. It meant a short list of items for smugglers to profit by trafficking into the Grendels and the possession of any of them punishable by a very unpleasant death. A lot of his work these days was moving illicit goods across the marshes from the coast.

Earlier in the evening, when his current cargo was loaded aboard the boat, he’d noticed the radioactive warning symbols on the crate. He’d moved some radioactive research equipment for private labs before, people who wanted to stay off the books. The current radioactive cargo had been packed in amongst some SAM missiles made by Borderland Industrial.

“Forget you saw it,” was the advice the gnoll supervising the loading of cargo had given him.

And he would do his best to forget about it. Having a reputation for forgetting about things like this was why Jukaal was still alive today. He would deliver his cargo; collect the balance owed to him; and then go do some fishing before returning to his home among the marshes.

Jaamhar was having a beer at a local pub, after his shift at the Uber Fish Cannery. He sat at a table, surrounded by a few coworkers. The Borderland News Network was hammering out bullet points by its on air personalities, attacking the Sons of the Fire as being little more than a terrorist group. But there were other pundits who were sympathetic to the Sons of the Fire and they made Jaamhar’s blood boil.

“Yes, the Sons of the Fire actively recruit ex-military and security members, but that hardly makes them representative of those groups,” shouted the on air pundit. “They’re lunatic terrorists who live in a fantasy world. The Sons of the Fire want the Grendels to break off trade with the rest of the world! They want to attack the very economy of our model state!”

“Should kill all those damned traitors,” growled Jaamhar, sipping from a mug of beer as he watched BNN. Some of the other gnolls seated around him at the bar murmured in agreement.

“The Sons of the Fire are patriots. They’re just reminding us all of our ancient traditions before we lose them,” retorted another pundit. “Sure, some people are going to whine about the mess, but it’s high time someone gave society a wake up call. It’s gotten so you can’t go anywhere in the Indomitable Borderlands without tripping over disgusting alien cultures and influences."

“That traitor should be the first against the wall,” stated Jaamhar harshly, unimpressed with the Sons of the Fire sympathizer speaking on BNN.

“Some of us want to hear what he’s got to say,” gestured a drunken gnoll, from a nearby table.

“Shut your gorram hole,” growled Jaamhar to the other gnoll, slamming his beer down on the counter and glaring at the stranger.

“Today, terrorists from the Sons of the Fire dragged administrator Dariin out of his home in the Kuuran District and executed him in the street!” yelled the first pundit, gesturing aggressively at the second pundit with a claw. “This isn’t about being a cultural activist, it’s insurrection!”

Kaar, the barkeeper, narrowed his gaze and took stock of the situation. Most likely it was just another pint n’ fight, but these days with tensions the way they were it paid to have an automatic shotgun loaded, under the counter in easy reach. The two gnolls starting trouble at the table were strangers to him, probably from out of town by their mannerisms. They were also probably ex-military. He'd seen Jaamhar get in the odd brawl, but he was sure that the cannery foremen had no idea who he was about to tangle with.

“What did you say, fur for brains?” challenged the gnoll at the table, his friend sitting beside him grinning maniacally.

“I said to shut your gorram hole,” growled Jaamhar, showing his fangs.

“There are always going to be some extremists in any good social movement,” countered the second pundit. “The Sons of the Fire aren’t going to stand by while the Indomitable Borderlands is auctioned off to the humans. Someone needs to speak for our culture, instead of buying someone else’s. Yarooo is marketing a new brand of a kinder, gentler Grendel in the World, while suffocating our warrior spirit here at home. Something had to give.”

“You’re validating terrorists and traitors!” shouted the first pundit. “I can’t believe you can sit in that chair and say it’s no big deal to start capping members of your government every time you feel cranky. I can’t believe anyone wants a return to the lawlessness of the Corporate Council era. Back then; you couldn’t go a day without a half-dozen assassinations. The only direction our leaders had back then was trying to stay alive, while plotting against anyone above them on the food chain. Do you want a disastrous education system like the nation of Little Flowers has for our pups?”

“This isn’t about throwing away our education system,” said the second pundit. “It’s about taking back our culture from the aliens. We need to return the Indomitable Borderlands to the Grendels.”

“You tell him,” howled the stranger, sitting at the table.

“That’s it you gorram traitor,” growled Jaamhar, pushing himself away from the bar to face his antagonist.

“It smells like fish in here,” grinned the gnoll at the table, putting down his drink and getting to his feet.

The two gnolls moved closer, raising their paws in defensive postures. The crowd started to stand up or crane their necks to get a better view. Jaamhar threw a wild punch at his foe, who laughed, quickly tossing his head back in time to avoid getting a fist in the snout. The stranger lunged at Jaamhar and one of his punches got through. Jaamhar felt like his side was on fire, but the booze and rage took the edge off his pain. He used his larger size to try to bowl his opponent over a table, but as he closed in on the stranger, his opponent sweep kicked his legs out from under him. Jaamhar crashed into a nearby chair, wondering just what happened to him. The stranger’s friend then decided to get up and started moving towards Jaamhar. He drew a long blade and tried to conceal it. The loud blast of a gunshot suddenly rang out in the bar.

The stranger’s friend leaned up against the edge of his table, holding the stump of his hand in disbelief, his long knife clattering to the floor. The other brawler leaped to his feet and stared straight at the barrel of the automatic shotgun leveled at him. Kaar came out from behind the bar, gesturing with his shotgun at the two strangers.

“You'd best leave before I start getting violent,” growled the Kaar, his finger on the trigger.

The barkeeper followed the two growling gnolls to the door, his gun trained on them. After they left, a couple of other patrons snarled and followed them outside.

“And you!” yelled Kaar, stuffing the shotgun barrel into Jaamhar’s face. “I expect a shiny tip by the end of the night.”

“Sounds fair, Kaar” managed Jaamhar, not completely displeased about the barkeeper’s timely intervention.

Most of the patrons quickly returned to their drinking. Kaar changed the channel on the bar’s video screens and at the moment no one was about to argue with him. Kaar turned on some gladiatorial matches in the hopes that viewing some blood sports would keep peace in the bar for the rest of the night. Politics in a dictatorship! What was the world coming to?

The small orbital station of Furlab 3 was doomed to suffer a fiery death. Not the fiery death of Furlab 5. Furlab 5 that had been destroyed by Grendel starfuries. They had been forced to do so after ZaKommian space pirates seized it as a base of operations in their attacks against Wysterian satellites. No, Furlab 3 was simply due to fall from orbit a week from now and burn up in the Wysterian atmosphere. It was a small, remote station that was all but forgotten by the Grendel Space Agency. The last of the science experiments being conducted on board, for the Gen Soup Corporation, had long since been transferred to the Juggernaut space station. The current crew aboard the station was on a salvage mission. They would strip the three modules that made up Furlab 3 of anything of value, before abandoning the station to the fires of reentry. The rear module was already stripped clean. Life support had been disconnected there and in the middle compartment, where they were now working. It was to be a prey’s death for the oldest space station still in the service of Star City.

Muun hunkered down with his two crew mates eating food through a vacuum tube. All things considered it was as decent a dinnertime aboard Fur Lab 3 as any other they enjoyed. Space salvage was specialized work, so there wasn’t enough of it to provide a constant source of income. When they weren’t tearing things down they were constructing things in orbit or training at Star City.

Muun’s own father had been on the orbital construction mission that built the first Furlab station, so many years ago. A part of him could not help but contemplate that he was tearing down his father’s legacy. But there was so very little room in aerospace technology for orbital nostalgia. If something no longer met the needs of the organizations that built it, the organizations would tear them down and build something that did. That or the organization would be torn down. It was the Prospector Mission that finally ended the Furlab stations. Using robots to mine the surface of the Moon of helium-3 meant that orbital stations wouldn’t just be for science, they’d need to be big enough to serve as an orbital spaceport for the extraterrestrial mining operations, to transfer their cargoes. When the Furlab stations were incapable of meeting the demands of the Prospector Mission, Juggernaut was built. Now, one by one, the remaining Furlab stations were being decommissioned.

The salvage team’s quiet meal was interrupted by a proximity alarm at the station’s control panel. The three orbital construction workers scrambled to their action stations. Baar swam through the micro gravity, spinning on his own axis, as he propelled himself to the command panel. Muun and Vaakar began suiting up.

“Proximity alert,” shouted Baar, drifting above the command panel. “Check viewing port delta.”

Muun pushed off from the wall, stopping himself beside the portal. He looked through the thick sheets of stacked Starglass, used on Grendel space stations and ships to provide transparent viewing through points in the hull, without compromising structural integrity. Muun took a quick glance and saw nothing. He brought the small telescope up on its arm to get a better look. He half expected to see some rogue space junk coming their way. Star City tracked everything in orbit and most space agencies were careful with their garbage, but the same couldn’t be said of everyone. Muun half expected to catch a glimpse of a broken solar panel or a burnt out starfury thruster coming his way. The orbital worker dialed in the optics and then he saw it.

“Suits on,” yelled Muun, struggling to finish getting his on. “Unknown object inbound. Spherical, about three meters in diameter.”

Once Vaakar had finished getting his suit on he moved over to where Muun was perched.

“Give me a look,” demanded Vaakar, nudging Muun aside.

The gnoll worked the optics again to continue compensating for the distance the object had traversed towards them, trying to get a better look.

“It’s a pod!” growled Vaakar.

Muun grabbed a cutting torch to arm himself. Vaakar grabbed a wrench. There wasn’t going to be time to get to the other end of the station, to get to the shuttle. Besides, there wasn’t time to prepare for launch before the pod arrived. Baar was desperately working at the command and control station. He didn’t have his suit on yet.

“Star City, this is Furlab 3. We have an inbound pod, intent and origin unknown. Divert starfuries and rescue shuttle to our coordinates immediately,” stated Baar, in a calm, detached voice. “We are under attack.”

Baar sent the message a few more times and then rechecked the station’s systems.

“We’re being jammed,” growled Baar, slamming a clawed fist into the panel.

“Pod is firing thrusters,” yelled Vaakar. “It’s slowing to dock!”

“Shiny, we’re getting boarded by pirates,” snarled Baar, bracing for the impact.

The pod struck the station, sending vibrations along the hull.

“It’s at the other end of the station,” reported Baar, monitoring the systems of Furlab 3.

“We need to get to the shuttle,” growled Vaakar, moving to the open hatch.

“It’s too late,” yelled Muun. “They’ll be through the docking hatch and inside before we get there. Close the hatch, Vaakar!”

“No goram way I’m waiting around to get spaced,” growled Vaakar, propelling himself through the hatch and into the short connecting corridor that linked them to the middle module.

Muun started after him, hoping to stop his crew mate. They had to stick together.

“Stop,” yelled Baar. “He’s gone. We don’t have much time. Seal the hatch.”

“Vaakar?” protested Muun, gesturing to where his crew mate had gone.

“Either Vaakar makes it or he doesn’t,” stated Baar, beginning to get his suit on. “He’s no longer our problem.”

“Thunder,” swore Muun.

Another week, thought Muun, and they’d have all be kicking back aboard Juggernaut, supervising the offloading of salvage and arranging for a nice planet bound vacation. What would anyone want with this station? Another week and it would crash into Wysteria. Unless they brought their own propulsion system for the station, not much was going to change that.

“Hatch 2 of the rear module is open,” reported Baar, noting the alarm going off on his panel.

The docking hatch opened into the rear module of Furlab 3. It was fortunate for the occupants of the pod that they were wearing spacesuits, because life support had long since been turned off during the salvage operation of this part of the station. But they already knew that before they opened the hatch.

“Alpha 3,” ordered the gnoll commanding the pod’s occupants, speaking through his suit-to-suit communications link. “Secure the module.”

The gnoll, known only as Alpha 3, nodded his helmeted head, before moving sloppily into the module. He had very little training in micro gravity and did not yet have his space legs. Being cramped in the confines of the pod for the flight here hadn’t made things better. But this was precisely why he was sent in first. He was the most expendable.

Past him floated by one of the station’s crew, moving across the module like a fish, spinning on his own axis. He’d seen cosmonauts from Star City move like this in documentaries, move like they were born in space. Alpha 3 raised his arm to shoot the floating gnoll with his projectile thrower, but is surprised to see his target kick off the wall like a swimmer doing a return lap. The bolt spun harmlessly passed the target and bounced off the inside of the hull without effect. The salvage crew member saw his opportunity and clubbed Alpha 3 in the helmet with his wrench, before pushing off the wall again and propelling himself towards the external hatch leading to the shuttle.

Alpha 3 drifted backwards into the pod, his hands clutching at his cracked helmet visor, in terror. Alpha 1 swore a streak of obscenities through the comms link and Alpha 2 pushed his stunned comrade out of the hatchway and back into the rear section of Furlab 3. Alpha 2 then hurled himself out of the pod hatchway and across the breadth of the station, holding a ceramic blade in his glove. The gnoll working frantically to open the hatch, to escape, turned to take a swing at his new assailant. Alpha 2 was much more practiced at moving in micro gravity. He caught the surprised gnoll’s wrist before the wrench connects and slashed open the underside of his opponent’s arm with his blade. The ceramic blade cut through the spacesuit like butter two more times. For a brief moment a scream is heard, as the air from the vented space suit bleeds out into the otherwise airless compartment.

“Secure the module,” ordered Alpha 1, in a firm voice. “Stick Alpha 3 with the cargo in the shuttle. We’ve still got two more crew to hunt down and we’re on the clock.”

Alpha 4 worked on the hatch to the middle compartment, while Alpha 2 opened up the external hatch to the space station, where the salvage crew’s shuttle was currently docked. Alpha 1 pulled the cargo capsule out of the pod and shook his head when he saw a panicked Alpha 3 sitting in the corner, paranoid that the cracked glass on his helmet would give way at any moment. Bits of blood from the slain gnoll were floating around in small, red globules.

“I’m through,” reported Alpha 2, opening the hatch to the shuttle.

“Alpha 4, what’s the hold up,” demanded Alpha 1, impatiently.

“Almost got it,” came the gruff reply of the gnoll working on the hatch to the middle module.

A minute later he was through to the corridor connecting the rear module to the middle module. Alpha 2 and Alpha 1 were loading the cargo capsule from the pod while they waited. The leader motioned for Alpha 2 to sort out Alpha 3 and get him in the shuttle, while he checked in with Alpha 4.

“They’ve shut off life support in the next compartment,” reported Alpha 4, his words punctuated by air hissing from his suit’s life support system.

“Probably shut down life support for the whole station,” stated Alpha 1. “Start on the next hatch and call me before you crack it. There’s two desperate gnolls inside and you don’t want to get messed up like Alpha 3.”

Alpha 4 grinned, gave a thumbs up, and propelled himself into the middle module, carefully scanning the module for the remaining crew. The compartment had only been partially stripped for salvage and if the crew in the command module willed it, their intelligence indicated that the life support could still have functioned. Years ago this module would have been the humming with activity, as scientists performed micro gravity experiments on behalf of wealthy corporations in the Grendels. Now it was almost barren with anything of value in the process of being cut away from the station. Once he reached the hatch to the command module, Alpha 4 went to work on accessing the final barrier between the assault team and the last surviving crew members of Furlab 3.

“Alpha 1, I’m standing by to open the inner hatch.”

Two gnolls in space suits quickly joined Alpha 4 at the hatch and readied their weapons. Alpha 4 pulled on the hatch with no effect. Puzzled, he tugged a few more times with no success.

“Have they barred it shut?” asked Alpha 2.

“Worse,” growled Alpha 1. “They’ve welded it shut.”

“Shiny,” grinned Alpha 4, sarcastically. “Now what boss?”

Huurk was ready to explode and it took most of his concentration to appear otherwise. The gnoll didn’t dare give off any signs of apprehension to his coworkers. In the leading space agency of a leading industrial super power, there weren’t a lot of stupid people working in Star City. Huurk was a protection technologist who was supposed to be monitoring the Furlabs in high orbit around Wysteria. What in fact he was doing was covering up the events currently unfolding on Furlab 3.

Damn the Sons of the Fire. Damn his oaths and damn him for being sucked into the underworld of the Grendels. His promising career was finished. Those of his family who survived their interrogations would be shamed for generations to come. When they found out what he’d done, the Director was going to nail his hide to the wall of his office. It would remain there for all time as a warning to other gnolls that betrayal carried a substantial price.

He’d doctored the feeds, so that the records from three days ago was now playing over top of scans of Furlab 3. When anyone watched the feed, it would appear that the crew were doing some routine maintenance on the shuttle and then breaking for a meal. The same meal they ate three days ago. Huurk had taken every possible precaution to avoid detection. Kaarw, the coworker most likely to notice the changes, had come down with a sudden case of food poisoning. Really though, it was his own fault for not properly securing his lunch.

Huurk tried to tell himself that whatever they wanted with Furlab 3 that it wasn’t a big deal, that they were scrapping the station anyways. He even convinced himself that the crew members would probably be spared. They were experienced assets of Star City and would be called on for future salvage jobs to the other, obsolete Furlab stations, as each one in turn was decommissioned. He began to feel a surreal detachment to his surroundings, to his coworkers. He was no longer on safe ground among friends. He was in the belly of the beast and when it woke up from its nap it was going to eat him alive.

The trickiest thing had been to silence the localized jamming of the station by the pod. That was something that could only be hidden for so long. The space pirates boarding the station had a limited window of opportunity to take over Furlab 3. The longer they took, the quicker that someone else at Star City would notice what was going on. The sooner he’d be dragged from his desk and be skinned alive. Huurk was already getting a very bad feeling about the operation. Something must have gone wrong. They were taking far too long. If this operation took much longer, Huurk swore that was going to stick his head in a cyclotron to permanently relieve the stress.

Just a little longer, he thought, lying to himself. He’d finish his shift, go straight to the airport and be in Lavoie et Saint Tuc in a matter of hours. In Lavoie et Saint Tuc money could buy you anything, most importantly a new identity and a villa to live it in. The money would be waiting in an account and he’d be free and clear of the fallout. When this was all over he’d even be able to come back, he’d told himself. Damn them! What was taking so long? The cyclotron was looking better and better with every passing moment. Why hadn’t they secured the station yet?

“Huurk, you feeling all right?” asked another technician, wondering if it was contagious.

“Fine,” stammered Huurk. “Everything’s fine. Just a lot on my plate these days.”

“If you had any less on your plate Huurk, you’d be starving for work. Monitoring the Furlab stations? Please, my pups could do it in their sleep.”

“Finances,” grumbled Huurk. “It’s complicated.”

“Well you’d better get your head on straight or my pups will be doing your job,” laughed the other technician.

Aboard Furlab 3, the two surviving members of the salvage crew were looking at a bleak future. Unknown forces had docked an unmarked pod to the station and had taken over the middle and rear modules. Vaakar was very likely already dead. He’d raced the pirates to the shuttle and lost. Baar had warned him, but he’d gone anyways. For all his ability, Vaakar’s impulsiveness was why he was a salvage worker and not an exploration cosmonaut. Not that it mattered though, since Baar had already come to terms with the fact that they’d be joining Vaakar’s fate in a little less than an hour. The space salvage team leader had few illusions that keeping them alive was a priority of whoever had boarded the station. None of them would be returning to the Indomitable Borderlands again. It was a hell of a way to retire.

“I can’t cut through the jamming,” growled Baar, floating over top the communications station. “How’s it coming on the torch?”

“I’ve almost finished welding the inner hatch shut, but I don’t know how much good it will do us,” said Muun, between breaths. “With the goram salvage torches in the middle module they can cut through whenever they please.”

“It buys us more time,” stated Baar, grimly. “Delaying them is our number one priority until we can clear up this jamming.”

“They’re the ones jamming us,” retorted Muun, “and they aren’t going to stop jamming us until they’ve taken the station and we’re dead.”

“Star City is monitoring us. They’ll see what’s happening and send help.”

“Shiny, they’ll cook us like they did Furlab 5. We’re dead either way.”

“Good point,” mused Baar, reconsidering his strategy.

“Nee ta ma duh. Tyen-shia suo-yo duh run doh gai si!”

“Feel better?” inquired Baar, after his comrade’s outburst.

“Just shiny,” grumbled Muun, putting his torch down. “Thanks for asking.”

“We need to take back the station before the starfuries, launched from Juggernaut, splash the place or die trying. We don’t know how many of them there are or what they’re armed with,” pondered Baar. “Not a lot great start for plotting our glorious victory is it?”

“Not much of a start for anything,” laughed Muun. “How many you think could have been packed into that pod?”

“Five, maybe six at the most if they packed them in like stores,” stated Baar. “No idea if Vaakar thinned them out before they got him.”

“I’m done welding the hatch shut, for all the goram good it will do us.”

“It’s a start, Muun,” sighed Baar. “It’s a start.”

The two surviving members of the space salvage expedition to Furlab 3 were in the command module, pushing aside their fears as they tried to think of a way out of their bleak situation. Doomed they might be, but they were still the same professionals that Star City had launched into space. Muun sat hunched down with his back to the hatch he’d just welded shut. Meanwhile, Baar continued to float stubbornly over the communications console, hoping to get through to Juggernaut or Star City or anyone at all.

“They’re trying to get through,” announced Muun, listening attentively at the hatch. “I can hear the torch on the other side!”

“Any ideas on how we retake the station?”

“Just one boss and I guarantee that you’re really not going to like it,” grinned Muun, urgently taking stock of their resources in the command module.

Alpha 3 sat on a fold out chair aboard the shuttle docked at Furlab 3, trying to calm himself down after his ordeal. Alpha 2 had initiated life support systems allowing the panicked Alpha 3 to finally remove his cracked helmet and gasp for breath. The slow air leak in his helmet had given the raider a panic attack. He’d been dumped inside the shuttle, to allow the boarding team to deal with more immediate concerns. The clock was ticking and they were getting behind schedule. Alpha 2 had no time for coddling anyone right now and it was not in his nature.

“Stay here and guard the cargo,” instructed Alpha 2, a bit disgusted to be associating with the other gnoll. “We’ve still got two targets in the command module to neutralize. Understand?”

Alpha 3 nodded, slowly. Unlike himself, Alpha 2 moved smoothly through the micro gravity environment, as he glided across the shuttle cabin. The gnoll left through the docking hatch and left him behind. He was now alone with the cargo aboard the shuttle. The cylinder beside him was covered in radioactive warnings.

Alpha 3 was as angry with himself as he was at the rest of the world. Unlike the others, he didn’t have the benefit of a weekend at the Snake Eyes orbital casino, paid for by a sympathizer to the Sons of the Fire, who had money to burn. Alpha 3 didn’t get a chance to train in micro gravity before the mission though. He was a last minute addition to the team, replacing someone shot dead by Borderland Security in a raid against the Sons of the Fire. The nausea drugs he took for space sickness were only partially successful. He wasn’t throwing up his last meal but the nausea was still at times overwhelming. His weakness angered him, but the nausea kept it in check. His weakness had shamed both himself and the Sons of the Fire. He figured that they’d made him enter the space station first because he was the most expendable and they were right.

It was while he was sitting, hunched beside the team’s cargo cylinder that he became aware of vibrations from outside the shuttle. At first he wasn’t certain what he was listening to. By the time he realized it what it was it was too late for Alpha 3 to react. He scrambled to put his helmet back on, but the outside hatch to the shuttle opened before he could seal it. The hatch opened into the cold vacuum of space.

Two gnolls, wearing their spacesuits, entered the shuttle, allowing the breathable atmosphere escape through the hatch behind them. Alpha 3 dropped his helmet and initially gasped for breath before the two gnolls grabbed him and tossed him out the hatch. Alpha 3 was now floating in space. He kicked out, trying to swim back to the station but couldn’t fight the momentum of being tossed through the open hatch. If it wasn’t for the fact that the gnoll was preoccupied by his imminent demise, he might have taken the opportunity to take in the glorious view of Wysteria spread out below him. He didn’t know that he was fortunate not to have much breath left in his lungs, after one of his attackers kneed him in the stomach before tossing him outside, but it only prolonged his death.

Alpha 3 now floated in the micro gravity, staring back at the shuttle that was docked to the small space station, as he drifted further and further away. Within ten seconds of exposure to space he began to suffer the effects of searing sunburn and aches in his joints, but to his wonder he was still alive. A minute later as his supply of oxygen in his bloodstream was depleting, Alpha 3 had the curious sensation of the saliva on his tongue starting to boil. The brightness of Wysteria below him was soon replaced by a bright white, as he slipped from consciousness and began to die.

Aboard the orbital shuttle, docked to Furlab 3, Muun and Baar weren’t celebrating so much as wondering how much longer they could hold out against the rest of the space pirates. They’d spaced one of the pirates, but they still didn’t know how many were left or what they were armed with. They were just amazed to still be alive after their reckless counter attack. Muun sagged against the inside wall of the shuttle. They’d done it! The shuttle was theirs now.

“Close the hatch,” ordered Baar, getting his crew mate attention.

“Sure thing boss,’ whistled Muun, locking down the hatch.

Once the door was closed and Muun gave him the thumbs up, Baar turned to address his crew mate.

“What the goram hell is that?” shouted Baar, pointing at the cylinder, covered in radiation warnings, perched beside the fold out seat.

“Shiny, they parked a nuke in our shuttle,’ growled Muun.

“Well that’s it then. Decision time. We have the shuttle and their nuke. Run or fight?” said Baar.

“Let’s get the thunder out of here!” replied Muun. “I’m done playing goram space marine.”

“Agreed,” nodded Baar, enthusiastically. “Let’s get out of here! Begin shuttle undocking procedures immediately.”

“You know though, we could do both,” said Muun, pausing to grin maniacally.

“What?”

“We could fire up the engines and push this goram station into the atmosphere, before we undock and escape reentry,” explained an excited Muun.

“Kill the bastards and escape,” pondered Baar, grimly. “I like it. Let’s get to work.”

The two gnolls worked methodically through the start up procedures. Space shuttles weren’t cars. You couldn’t just fire them up and make a quick getaway.

“Initiating drive computer,” stated Baar, glancing over his shoulder at the sealed hatch connecting them to Furlab 3. “Begin emergency undocking procedures immediately.”

“Sure thing, boss,” acknowledged Muun, pushing his way to the nearby hatch and getting to work.

‘Drive computer online,” reported Baar, from the pilot seat. “Systems nominal. Initiating the navigation computer.”

Muun continued to work furiously, to disconnect the link between shuttle and station. When he was done, they’d still be connected, so the shuttle could push the station down into a fiery reentry. Then he’d just pull an emergency lever and the shuttle would be free.

“Navigation computer online,” stated Baar. “All systems nominal. Activating air exchangers and reestablishing life support.”

“Emergency undocking ready,” reported Muun.

“Come up here and help me fire the engines,” ordered Baar.

“I’ll be right there,” replied Muun, pushing himself across the cabin to the copilot seat.

“Prepare for emergency system checklist 4,” ordered Baar, flipping over the pages of his flight manual to the right page.

“Checklist ready,” answered Muun, looking at the same page of the small laminated manual in his hand.

The two went through the checklist quickly, but deliberately.

“Countdown to engines firing in 10 seconds,” stated Baar. “Standby for emergency undocking on my signal.”

Muun pushed himself back to the hatch.

“Standing by for emergency undocking,” replied Muun.

This was it. These bastard space pirates were finally going to pay for what they’d done to Vaakar. Muun and Baar would both be heroes when they got back to Star City. Medals and commendations would fall on them like snow in the mountains. His father would be proud.

Muun was looking back at Baar, his hand on the emergency release lever, when he heard what to him was an improbably sound. The hatch was opening. His hand went to a nearby wrench, but by the time he raised it to defend himself, the hatch was open to the space station. The space pirate was looking straight at him, as surprised as he was. Seeing Muun still wearing his helmet, the raider instinctively fired up his torch, while aimed at the alarmed salvage worker.

The cutting torch ignited the oxygen rich air that filled the cabin and fire engulfed the contents of the shuttle in seconds. Baar, Muun, and Alpha 4 were all being roasted alive in their suits by the robust flames that devoured the air. A gout of flames shot through the hatchway into the rear module of Furlab 3 as the fire quickly burned its way through the shuttle cabin’s oxygen. Flames all around him, Muun slumped forward, pulling the emergency docking releasing lever. He was already dead.

The shuttle detached itself from Furlab 3 and the force of the flames through the hatch provided just enough propulsion to begin moving the shuttle away from the station. The surviving raiders knew something was horribly wrong. They were already puzzled to find the command module empty and sent Alpha 4 back to check on the shuttle. The two raiders now made their way swiftly towards the rear of the station and it was then that they saw the flames through the open hatchways connecting the modules.

Alpha 2 was the first to reach the open docking hatch at the rear module of Furlab 3. He could see the shuttle, it’s nose facing him, only ten feet from the hatch and slowly drifting away. He could see the scorched body of Alpha 4, floating in the micro gravity between the station and the shuttle. He continued to stand in the hatchway, watching, when the shuttle engines fired and the shuttle hammered into the station. The shuttle’s nose plowed into the hatchway and Alpha 2, pushing halfway into the module before becoming stuck. Alpha 2 struck the far side of the station with enough force to leave him bouncing limply around the module. Alpha 1 swore loudly through his suit’s communications system, not caring if there was no one to hear him anymore. The last surviving raider pushed himself through the hatch to the middle module trying to escape the disaster that was overtaking his mission. Alpha 1 was halfway through the middle module when one of the rocket engines on the shuttle overloaded. The explosion set off the second engine, and it broke loose, tearing through the command module. Fragments from the explosion ripped through the entire station. The rear module broke loose, spilling glittering pieces of debris into space.

Alpha 1 was still alive in the middle module, too stunned by the destruction to be angry anymore. The rear module was gone and with it the shuttle and the breaching pod. The nuke he’d hoped to deploy against the Juggernaut station was lost with the shuttle. The command module was a gaping wreck of jagged, twisted metal. There were a number of holes in the hull of the middle module, where he had taken refuge. Alpha 1 hooked himself up to the only intact oxygen tank that he could find in the middle module, but he still had no way off the doomed station. What he was soon aware of was that the collision had pushed the crippled ruins of Furlab 3 into a rapidly decaying orbit. Hours later, Alpha 1 was grinning despite his predicament as the pieces of the station started to burn up in the atmosphere. The shower of fiery debris hissed into the Sea of Storms, as Furlab 3 met its end. Alpha 1’s last thoughts, before being cooked inside the middle module, were that this was an ironic death for a Son of the Fire.

In Star City, things were going poorly in the opinion of the saboteur. Huurk was still at his monitoring station, swearing softly under his breath, when security came. When he saw them enter the room, Huurk was almost relieved. The stress of the operation had left him distraught, as his split loyalties and fears tumbled round and round. The Sons of the Fire had taken too long to secure the space station and his tampering had no doubt been detected. He could already visualize being skinned alive and the director hammering his still bloodied hide to the wall, while he helplessly watched.

Huurk felt the spasms rip through his body, as one of the security personnel touched him with a stun stick.

“We’d like you to come with us,” grinned the security force member, standing over his twitching body.

When they dragged his incapacitated body out of the room, Huurk was aware of a team of familiar technicians descending on his workstation. Huurk knew that before long he’d be experiencing a very unpleasant interrogation and would soon wish that he’d died from the trauma of the stun stick.

The trip from Star City was less than memorable. Huurk had a bag shoved over his head, before he was tossed into the back of an armoured van. He was handcuffed to the bed of the compartment, but sensed that he wasn’t alone. They drove for hours before truck came to a stop. The back doors of the armoured van opened and rough paws dragged him out, after unchaining him to the truck bed. Before long he was in an interrogation room, strapped to a cold and uncomfortable metal chair.

Hours later, the bag came off his head and he could see two other gnolls in the room with him.

“Plane tickets to Lavoie et Saint Tuc,” noted one of his interrogators, holding them in front of him. “Going on a vacation to get some Sun?”

“I was hoping to play some baccarat at the casinos,” muttered Huurk.

The lead interrogator nodded to his companion and the beating began.

Haymaar paced the floor of great hall in the Prime Administrative Building of Juulan, the capital of the Koorlon Province. The gunshots heard a moment ago had been replaced by a tense silence, but the heavy smell of cordite lingered. The bodies of dead and dying gnolls littered the floor. Some had fought alongside Haymaar and some against him. Word would spread like fire through the Indomitable Borderlands that the Sons of the Fire had seized this symbolic building. Their sacrifice would be spoken of for generations to come.

“I’ve been shot,” groaned Waaalar, clutching his abdomen in pain.

“You and everyone else!” grinned Haymaar, holding a paw to a pressure point to stop the bleeding from his left thigh.

“It hurts!”

“Shut up!” growled Haymaar, growing impatient with his comrade. “What did you expect? Flowers and kittens?”

Much to Haymaar’s amazement, Waaalar had survived his inexperience in the dangerous mountain logging camp, but he was still far too green in the wilds to have earned the respect of the experienced tree faller. Waaalar may have pull in the Sons of the Fire, but he still had a goram lot to learn. Waaalar was like many of the newer members of the Sons of the Fire. They talked big, but when the time came to have blood on their hands they were poor specimens of the warrior breed. The security forces they’d just killed were more worthy of praise than Waaalar and his kind. Some of the provincial government staff had fled when the shooting start and some had stayed to fight alongside the security forces. In particular, Haymaar admired the one administrator, who after running out of ammunition had thrown down his handgun. He’d just stood there, growling, defiantly waiting to be shot down. He was fighting today so that gnolls like that administrator would have an honoured place in the new order.

Haymaar finally found the remains of their assault team’s designated medic, almost cut in half by machine gun bullets. The gnoll scrounged through the small medic pack and found one of the cans of Woundspray was still intact. Haymaar bit the top off the can, wiped his bloodied leg clean, and sprayed the wound. The artificial skin began hardening and releasing medication to help his body deal with the shock and fight the possibility of infection. Satisfied, he tossed the bottle to Waaalar, who grunted as he reached for the tumbling can.

“There,” stated Haymaar, gruffly. “Put some of that on you and quit whining. We’re going to be here a while.”

The other surviving members of the Sons of the Fire were at work, improvising the defences or keeping watch against any attempts to retake the building. A couple of gnolls had already been sent to the roof with sniper rifles, to watch for signs of enemy movement. When the army came they’d also be the first to die. Haymaar watched as a couple of gnolls began nailing chicken wire across the windows to keep attackers from tossing in grenades. Doors were reinforced and booby-trapped. Iron bars were rammed through the walls of key hallways to create uneven hurdles for advancing attackers.

“What now boss?” asked a gnoll, named Buun.

“Go help Zaarlon upstairs, see if he needs help fixing the place up,” ordered Haymaar.

“Sure boss.”

Haymaar hadn’t been in command of the attack on the Prime Administrative Building. By thunder, he hadn’t even been second or third in command of the attacking force. But all those warriors were now dead and it had been up to him to lead the survivors of the assault force until they too were dead. Technically, Waaalar should now be in charge, but nobody was listening to him anymore. In grade school, Haymaar had been instructed in mountaineering infantry warfare while Waaalar was training for a possible future in the navy. That and he was cracking under the pressure. It was crystal clear to the rest of the survivors who should be running things.

“We should pull out,” gulped Waaalar, still suffering from a gunshot in the stomach. “Not enough of us left to hold out. Need to leave!”

“I told you to shut your goram hole!” raged Haymaar, kicking the other gnoll hard in the leg. “We’re here to make a statement to our brothers in the Indomitable Borderlands. They need to know that it’s not too late to return to the old ways, that we don’t have to have our culture polluted by alien ideas and alien ways. We’ll purify our land and lead our people to a new future, a better future than the decay of Yarooo’s corruption!”

A couple of gnolls yelled and pumped their arms in support, waving their assault rifles. Waaalar yipped in pain.

“Truth is Waaalar,” continued Haymaar, “you’re a disgrace to the Sons of the Fire and so is whoever sponsored you. You don’t deserve to die with us when they come for us.”

Haymaar rotated the assault rifle, attached to his body by a patrolling harness, and squeezed off a single round into the head of Waaalar. The gunshot echoed loudly through the quiet hall, raising the tension of everyone around him. The seated gnoll, slid back onto the floor, his tongue between his teeth.

“What the thunder was that!” came a loud voice from the upstairs mezzanine.

“Not a goram thing,” yelled back Haymaar.

“Nothing? Well isn’t that just shiny,” snarled the voice from upstairs.

“Strip him of kit and ammo,” ordered Haymaar to the nearest gnoll. “Toss his worthless hide outside with the trash. I don’t want his carcass next to mine when they kill me.”

The gun toting gnoll closest to him nodded in agreement and began scavenging the dead gnoll for ammo. He was a true member of the Sons of the Fire. He understood. They would fight as warriors already dead, happy to be in the company of like-minded gnolls of their brotherhood when battle came. Songs would be made of this day.

Warrant Officer Daag was seated in the rear cabin of a heavy assault helicopter. The Black Eagle attack helicopter was a state of the art weapons platform in the aerospace industry. This variant had room to carry cargo or a section of special forces for deadly deliveries, after first clearing the landing zone with their guns and missiles. Packed in around Daag were nine other Kill Pack soldiers scrambled from a state of readiness to intervene militarily in the Koorlon Province. If and when the Sons of the Fire escalated their actions militarily, they were the ones tasked to strike back first. The airbase had two hundred Kill Pack soldiers rotating on standby. One third of them were able to move out with only five minutes notice. Ten attack helicopters were out on the pad, well maintained, with crew rotated on board and ready to go at any time. Twenty more helicopters were ready to follow them up. After gunshots were reported, at the provincial administration buildings in Juulan, it was go time. It was time for the Kill Packs to crush the insurrection before it gained any momentum.

The excitement for the hunt was building in the compartment, as soldiers looked to one another and clasped their assault rifles firmly. Moments later there was a commotion in the cockpit that got everyone’s attention.

“What’s the problem up there?” demanded Warrant Daag, speaking through the mike that linked him with the aircrew.

“Not enough power,” yelled a voice back at him.

Daag leaned forward and saw the gnoll pilot flipping a number of controls without effect before breaking down and swearing.

“Dismount your troops, Warrant,” ordered the pilot. “We’re going to have to check the systems.”

Warrant Daag yelled at his soldiers to dismount and they did so, bitter about the air force failing them. That’s when Daag noticed troops exiting from all the other helicopters on the ground too.

“I need comms now!” yelled Daag, while gnolls scrambled all around him.

Two minutes later, the head of the ground crew came over to talk to the Kill Pack leader.

“They’ve all been sabotaged,” growled the chief.

“What about the ones in the hanger?” asked the Warrant, hoping for something to go right.

“Them too,” stated the chief, glumly. “No one’s going anywhere for a long time.”

Daag nodded and got on a portable command radio that had escaped unharmed. The main communications at the tower were also down, almost certainly because of sabotage.

“Den alpha, all my helicopters and base comms have been sabotaged. I require thirty new attack helicopters with new crew ferried in ASAP,” stated Daag, speaking over the radio. “I suggest immediate replacement of all current ground crews and maintenance staff. I also need at least two companies of military police, over.”

“Wolf pack alpha, anything else, over?” asked the comms operator on the other end of the line.

“Den alpha, just some nails to hammer someone’s hide to the wall with, over,” grinned Daag.

“Wolf pack alpha, hang tough, out,” crackled the voice.

Things had gone horribly wrong and Daag didn’t want any repeat performances. Whoever did this was probably still here, waiting for the chance to strike again. Grounded, Daag quickly deployed his special forces soldiers to guard the perimeter and buildings of the airbase. Nobody was to come in or leave. They replaced the base security and put everyone under guard. He wasn’t kidding about wanting to nail someone’s hide to the wall.

On the road to the Koorlon’s provincial capital of Juulan, a column of armour and trucks carrying troops was in a hurry. They were battalion sized in strength and based fifty miles outside the capital. They were tasked to fill the streets with troops and deploy infantry fighting vehicles wherever needed. And after warriors from the Sons of the Fire had stormed the provincial administrative buildings, they were needed now. They would maintain order in the capital and assist the Kill Packs with some extra firepower.

“I heard on the news they killed everyone inside the building,” observed one soldier, making conversation on the bumpy ride.

“We don’t get our orders from BNN,” growled a Sergeant, seated nearby. “We’re not going to know what happened until we get boots on the ground and do a proper recce.”

“Of course Sergeant,” responded the soldier. “Never hurts to have more intel.”

“This whole thing is goram crazy,” said another soldier. “Attacking our own people! What’s with that?”

“Yeah, shouldn’t we be killing Little Flower’s soldiers by now?” yelled someone from the back of the truck, referring to an economic rival in Wysteria.

“You’ll have to wait like the rest of us, Gaavad,” growled the Sergeant, addressing the solider in the back of the truck by name. “We’ll sink our fangs into some ELF troopers when we receive the order. It’s not like they’re an endangered species. They’ll have plenty of troops for when we do some killing. Till then we got plenty to do here and now. The next thing I want to hear out of this truck better be about your mission today or a nice song, you got me?”

“Sergeant!” howled the chorus of soldiers on the truck.

The next thing they knew, the ground erupted ahead of them. The scout car and infantry fighting vehicle that were on point for the column were engulfed by deafening explosions. The windshield of the truck they were in was blown out and the driver slammed on the breaks. The troops slid down the benches to the front of the truck’s covered flatbed, swearing while trying to recover their balance.

“Dismount! Dismount! Dismount!” howled the Sergeant, leading his troops out the back of the truck and into an extended line on either side of the road. They lay there in prone shooting positions, covering their arcs of fire, while medics ran from other vehicles to the front of the column.

The armoured scout car was lying on its side, flames shooting from a huge hole that had been ripped into it. The infantry fighting vehicle was missing a tread and looked heavily damaged, but the rugged Sabre 7 Infantry fighting vehicle had survived. Some gnolls with fire extinguishers were approaching the scene, led by army engineers. There were mines everywhere. The rear doors of the disabled IFV were jammed shut by the explosion and it took a couple of engineers to pry them open with their mechanical jaws. The troops inside staggered out from the smoky carrier, wearing their gas masks. A few were lightly injured and concussed, but they were otherwise all right. The gnolls in the reconnaissance vehicle had been killed by the blast before rescuers could arrive.

It amazed his staff that Colonel Mortaaw seemed unfazed by the mess they found themselves in. A veteran of several foreign wars, he had long since become accustomed to things falling apart around him and doing his planning in real time. Company commanders were ordered to take up defensive positions and a recce element was sent into the forest to seek out the enemy. A communications specialist soon brought word that the another column on route to Juulan had experienced similar problems on other road. Colonel Mortaaw got on his radio to headquarters, gave a situation report, and asked for additional engineering resources. Headquarters had failed in their planning to anticipate that the insurgents would mine the roads leading to Juulan. The plan was falling apart and they hadn’t even gotten to the objective yet. Heads would roll, but right now Colonel Mortaaw needed to stay focused. He asked permission to continue on to the objective on foot and his suggestion was passed on as orders to the other mechanized columns as well.

The area was quickly secured by the dismounted troops, to protect them against enemy warriors waiting in ambush, but there was no one to lash out at. The soldiers sent up the steep bank, at the side of the road, and into the woods found empty crates of mines but no one to kill. Normally, with the roads mined, they’d have broken off their tracked vehicles from the column to go overland to the target, but the mountainous terrain didn’t permit it. The terrain also didn’t allow for them to just turn back and go another route, because the other route had also been mined. Colonel Mortaaw passed down preparatory orders for half of his troops to continue to the objective on foot. Once they finished pouring over some maps, the commander and his staff handed out compass bearings and distances down through the chain of command. Orders were hastily improvised and the soldiers filed off into the mountainous forest. They had a hard march ahead of them over difficult ground. The roads could no longer be trusted. The rest of the soldiers would stay with the crippled column and wait patiently for the route to be cleared by engineers.

Haymaar was leaning against the wall, thinking back on a life well lived that would soon be over. He’d lived most of his years in the forests of the Barrier Mountains with a chainsaw in his hand, far from the big cities. Away from the stink of corruption and the alien influences that threatened to destroy his culture.

He cradled his Rapier assault rifle that hung from his patrolling harness and waited for the onslaught. It took much longer than he expected. The mines on the roads had delayed the approach of mechanized divisions into town. Saboteurs at the closest airbase had grounded their helicopters and destroyed base communications. But Haymaar only knew that other members of the Sons of the Fire were operating outside the Provincial Administrative Buildings. He didn’t know of their successes. He had gone into this with very low expectations of surviving his actions. That he had lived this long was a happy surprise. Many others from the assaulting force had not been as lucky.

He heard the report of high-powered rifles from the rooftop above him. Snipers deployed to harass approaching soldiers were firing. Then came the blast of a heavy machine gun from outside the building and Haymaar could hear the rounds striking the towers of the building.

“Kiir,” yelled Haymaar, over the sounds of gunfire. “Get up top and find out what’s going on!”

The gnoll across the hall from him immediately sprang to his feet and bolted up a nearby staircase. Kiir was running up the staircase when a rocket ripped through the tower and burned him alive. The silence that followed lasted less than a second.

The heavy machine guns outside began laying down rapid fire to cover approaching troops. The Sons of the Fire warriors, who had earlier seized the building, popped up intermittently to return fire through the windows. A couple warriors fell to the machine gun bullets. The bullets were fragmenting the stone arching the windows and it was hard to see for the chips of stones flying in the faces of the defenders. The enemy forces outside were closing in. Haymaar could sense that they were losing the firefight under the onslaught of heavy infantry support weapons. A large section of the far wall suddenly vanished in an explosion that bowled over several nearby warriors. The void in the wall was soon filled with rifle rounds, the gap lit up by tracer fire. More warriors fell or were driven back to better cover.

“Stand fast!” howled Haymaar, as the gnoll beside him caught three rounds in the body. In his peripheral vision, he saw the gnoll slide forward, dead as they draped themselves over the cover they were moving to.

Grenades went through the hole in the wall and the deafening booms filled the great hall, along with murderous metal fragments. Enemy soldiers moved into the gap in the wake of the explosions, some falling to the aim of the desperate defensive fire. The attackers easily dispatched those nearest to where the grenades were lobbed, warriors still concussed by the explosions. Haymaar heard two more explosions upstairs, where he had no doubt new entrances were being made for other attacking forces. The defending warriors were wilting under the attackers fire, but from their hastily made defences they were still exacting a toll on the enemy. A yell came from outside the building and some attacking soldiers immediately peeled off to the flanks of the hall, allowing the defenders the opportunity to shoot down a few of them on the move during the redeployment.

Then came the rockets, one after another. They came through the hole in the wall and struck the far side of the hall, where most of the remaining Sons of the Fire were making their grim stand. The rockets left Haymaar deaf and badly burned. All but a couple others around him were dead or dying. Haymaar removed the empty magazine from his assault rifle and let it drop, clattering on the stone floor at his feet. He slammed in a fresh magazine and got back into a firing position. Across the hall from him were the advancing gnoll soldiers, closing for the kill. They crashed through scattered bits of broken furniture to take up shooting positions behind partial cover, before laying down fire so other gnolls to their left or right could do the same. The room was a seething swarm of enemy, leapfrogging through the ruins towards them. The amount of gunfire roaring through the hall was deafening. The next time Haymaar exposed himself to shoot, an enemy round nearly tore off one of his shoulders. He fell back, growling in pain, still grasping his assault rifle. A warrior near him howled an ancient war cry before rising to lunge towards the attacking force, his rifle firing on full auto. The warrior was hit the moment he exposed himself and barely made it over the pile of broken furniture before the bullets tore him apart.

Haymaar was only dimly aware of the grenade going off nearby. He was deaf. A moment later one of the attackers was standing over him, putting two rifle rounds in his chest. The sounds of gunfire soon quieted down and the radio chatter began.

“My Prince, the objective is secured,” reported the leader of the assaulting force, through his comms headset. “We await your command.”

Atop a bullet-ridden tower of the Provincial Prime Administrative Building, a new flag was unfurled on the flagpole by a pair of precariously balanced soldiers. As the wind snapped at the standard, onlookers in the streets now looked up to catch sight of something not seen in their lifetime. The flag had a red castle in the foreground, with an extended, golden gnoll paw behind it, as if it was about to grasp its prize; all set on a black field. The Woodan Clan colours were once more flying on the field of battle.

Jaamhar was tired after a long night shift at the Uber Fish Cannery. He lived and worked in the storm swept city of Piik, a commercial harbour on the east coast of Blood Island. The winter crabbing season was well underway and when the icy boats came ashore and offloaded their catch, the plant workers were ready. Three ships, their holds laden with crab, had come in from the Sea of Storms and he’d just finished pulling twelve hours at the primary processing plant of Uber Fish Canneries.

His cousin, Tuuk, was a deckhand on one of the boats that fought its way in through the rough seas, but they hadn’t seen each other in weeks. The crabbing season was a time of frantic activity and little rest. As soon as they’d overseen the offloading of their catch, Tuuk’s ship would set out again into the Sea of Storms to refill their holds with crab from the ocean floor. Before the crab was finished offloading from the ships, Jaamhar was on site at the processing plant, as the shift foreman for a long night’s work without a break.

His shift at an end, Jaamhar walked home, stopping by at the popular Booze For U convenience store. It might be noon but he needed some beer to unwind before he could sleep. The gnoll went into the store and was greeted by the familiar storeowner.

“Must have been a good night,” grinned Maarl. “I’ve had half your shift in here.”

“Three crab boats came in at midnight,” growled Jaamhar. “I think some operators were ready to feed themselves through the butchering machine for a break.”

Jaamhar’s eyes darted to the flat screen mounted high behind the counter. The television screen had the volume muted with a scroll text playing across the bottom. On the Borderland News Network, armed troops were patrolling the streets of a Grendel city. They weren’t wearing a uniform that Jaamhar recognized.

“Now what’s going on,” snarled Jaamhar, gesturing up to the screen with a claw.

“Crazy happenings, my friend,” observed Maarl. “The Sons of the Fire stormed the government buildings of the Koorlon Province and a private army took them back.”

“Whose goram army?”

“The Woodan Clan,” replied the shopkeeper. “They just marched in.”

“More like declared goram war,” growled Jaamhar.

“You need two sides for a war,” offered Maarl.

“What do you think Yarooo is going to do? Pin a medal on them?” growled the irate customer. “There’s only supposed to be one army in the Grendels. Ours.”

“Yes, I can see how this could be a problem,” admitted Maarl, suddenly sorry he’d left the flat screen on.

“Problem! I pull a shift at the plant and the world’s gone straight to thundering ashes.”

“Looks like you’re really going to need this beer today,” offered Maarl, ringing in the purchase of Bitter Harvest Laager.

In the halls of the Borderland News Network, reporters and pundits were divided over the recent actions of the Woodan Clan. The facts were that they had put down the uprising of the Sons of the Fire, not the government. Clan Prince Roor’s private army was on the streets of Juulan, the provincial capital. The domestic media hadn’t had a story like this since Yarooo overthrew the Corporate Council in a coup de tat. Most journalists preferred to take a balanced view, unsure about who would come out on top, and more importantly what they would do to dissenters. Others put their careers and possibly their lives on the lines for their beliefs, acting as mouthpieces for the different factions. Then Prince Roor announced that the private army of the Woodan Clan was digging in at Juulan. Prince Roor’s warriors would continue to keep order until the crisis was concluded. It was a direct challenge to the authority of Yarooo and the networks were tripping over themselves to get positioned to cover the unfolding story.

A pundit happy program called Crosshairs was on the air and with the internal unrest in the Grendels, ratings were skyrocketing. So was the number of death threats against pundits who took hard line or controversial stances.

“Prince Roor is a true Grendel!” shouted the first pundit. “When the government hesitated in dealing with the insurgents in Juulan, he stepped in and did what had to be done. We should be grateful that there are leaders of gnolls of his stature in these uncertain times.”

“He’s nothing more than an opportunist, trying to advance his own path to glory!” shouted the second pundit. “It’s certainly convenient that Roor just happened to have a fully equipped private army in the outskirts of Juulan. And right at the same time as the Grendel army was experiencing difficulty from saboteurs and terrorists I might add. The offer by the Woodan Clan to have their private army maintain order until the crisis is over is tantamount to a proclamation of rebellion!”

“This is so typical of the old guard,” laughed the first pundit. “They dropped the ball and when someone else steps up to clean up the mess they call them a traitor. Yarooo should be preparing a parade in Roor’s honour! Roor is a true warleader!”

“You’re both missing the point,” stated a third pundit. “Who cares if Prince Roor crushed the insurrection for honourable reasons or not. The Sons of the Fire were making a statement that the rest of us needed to hear and Roor sent in his private army to silence them. That’s the true injustice here! The Sons of the Fire represented the best of us, the keepers of our ancient warrior ways. If someone is willing to take a stand to protect the Grendels from alien influences I say it’s about time!”

“Wait just a moment here,” cautions the host, mostly there just to interrupt the jostling pundits for commercial breaks. “I’m certain that nobody is suggesting we roll back the clock to complete anarchy. The Indomitable Borderlands remains one of the great stabilizing forces of the world. When Crosshairs returns, we’ll be talking with our on the spot reporter in Juulan, where the private army of Prince Roor is patrolling the streets.”

Joseph Lavigne was just another guy trying to get ahead in the world and put food on the table or at least that was how he perceived himself. If that meant traveling the world to find what his clients needed and bending a few laws that was all right with him. It wasn’t as if the laws had ever done much to protect him during his nomadic life.

It was the travel that took the biggest toll. Sometimes just being a citizen of the notoriously corrupt Lavoie et Saint Tuc was enough for airport security to snap on a pair of rubber gloves and turn you inside out. Unless of course you were going to a sunny nation in the Millennium Isles owned by the equally corrupt dictator name Fat Tony. When you traveling from Lavoie et Saint Tuc to Fat Tony’s fiefdom, it was always assumed to be shady business and you had to be fluent in bribery to prosper in either nation.

If Lavoie et Saint Tuc’s culture was decadent and a bit used up, whatever passed for culture in Fat Tony’s Friends of Ours was bought and garishly displayed to make sure everyone knew you paid a lot for it. The trappings of luxury all jumbled up and piled on top of each other without any thought to how things looked. The only thing that mattered was that everything was the best of everything that you could afford. Where Lavoie et Saint Tuc was subtle, Fat Tony’s fiefdom was brash and in your face, even when they were trying to be subtle.

It wasn’t so much a problem getting into Friends of Ours with a Lavoie et Saint Tuc passport. That was easy. The problems started when you wanted to go from there to a more law-abiding nation, requiring a more round about travel plan to avoid any unwanted legal entanglements. After making a major purchase on behalf of his client, he now needed to get his merchandise out. There weren’t a lot of nations that give you a free pass through customs if you were known to be traveling from either nation.

To stay below the radar, he’d bribed a deep-sea fishing boat to smuggle him out to international waters. Once the boat was far enough away from the Millennium Isles they’d were to meet up with another ship, one coming from somewhere with an origin that was a bit more savory. He’d transfer to the new ship with his merchandise and be on his way. When the captain talked nervously about the chance of being intercepted by navy vessels acting on behalf of WASA (Wysterian Anti-Smuggling Accord), Joseph had laughed. The nations backing WASA had their ports far from the Millennium Isles. Besides, right now they’re attentions were focused on the tensions in the Aldaron Isles, on the other side of Wysteria. At the moment, they were just one more big fishing boat in the commercial fleet, out to cast their nets and plunder the seas.

It was always these long round about trips that wore Joseph down. Life aboard the fish boat was boring and it wasn’t as if he was in a line of work where he could talk a lot with the crew. The captain might have even played with the idea of throwing him overboard and stealing his stuff. It wasn’t unheard of. The passenger suspected that the captain knew enough to assume that the people Joseph worked for would come looking for them if he didn’t make his rendezvous. That at least reassured him that he probably wouldn't be knifed for his wallet. The merchandise he was trafficking was locked in a steel case that was concealed inside a larger worn suitcase, also locked. He never opened the either case, but instead lived out of a small backpack.

What unnerved the crew of the fishing boat the most was the way that the other ship had found them. There was no radio contact or cell phone call. Joseph himself never carried a cell phone when he was traveling clandestinely. It didn’t pay to have a beacon reporting your position to satellites, even when your phone was turned off. The ship he was making contact with knew the time and coordinates of the meeting. It was a Grendel marine research vessel and for all Joseph knew they actually did marine research. But not today.

When the ship pulled alongside, the crew got visibly nervous, seeing that the other ship was crewed by gnolls. The captain wasn’t much better than his crew and was very glad to see that his passenger was already packed and not delaying the transfer. Joseph handed his luggage to the gnoll on the deck, before climbing up onto the research vessel himself. The gnoll handled his luggage with care, taking it below deck without a word. The fishing boat captain swore as he ordered the crew back to work and set about a moving off on a new course.

Just as the fishing boat began to move away from the larger vessel, a gnoll appeared on deck with a large rocket launcher. Joseph looked back to see the rocket strike the fishing boat in the side. The boat shuddered from the impact and the explosion ripped off most of the bow. The men on deck were screaming. The captain came out of the wheelhouse on fire. The second rocket struck the ship in the stern, killing the engine and two of the crew on deck. What remained of the burning fishing boat quickly filled with water and began to sink. The research vessel stayed on station just long enough to be certain there were no survivors before heading off. Joseph was stunned by the brutality of the attack. He’d seen his share of killings, but nothing quite like this.

“You’re not upset over a few dead humans are you?” growled the gnoll, his muzzle next to Joseph’s ear. The sea breeze still hadn’t completely blown away the chemical smell from the rockets fired from the deck.

“No, I’m just sorry I paid the captain in advance,” managed Joseph weakly, trying not to become too closely associated in the gnoll’s mind with the dead humans.

Joseph Lavigne immediately found himself missing the familiar confines of the fishing boat. He felt dangerously exposed. Joseph had dealt with gnolls before but these ones were different. There was something wilder about them, more primal. They way they looked at him sent chills down his spine and nearly paralyzed his nervous system. He really needed a smoke. He swore to himself that this was absolutely the last time he traveled by boat.

Joseph clumsily lit his cigarette on deck, his shaking hands barely functioning. He was in desperately in need of something to calm his shattered nerves. Suddenly, one of the crew walked up beside him and clubbed him in the side of the head with a powerful paw. The cigarette and lighter fell from his grasp, as he was sent sprawling to the deck. Other gnolls began closing in on him and he involuntarily screamed, but that only increased their excitement for the kill. They dragged him down below deck, down to the hold, and in an hour he was begging them to kill him. Two hours later the crew obliged him. When they were done, they bled him and popped his lungs, before filling his body cavities with weights. They threw him overboard and Joseph Lavigne quickly disappeared into the depths. It really was absolutely the last time he traveled by boat.

Prince Roor had just returned from Juulan, the provincial capital, where his private army was still in control of the streets. He’d left behind his trusted commander behind, Commander Hurmiir, in charge of the Woodan Clan forces on the ground. Hurmiir was faithful to his Clan and to his Clan Prince. He was a retired officer from the Grendel Expeditionary Forces, who’d seen action during the great wars between North Alerica and the USSR. After leaving the military, the distinguished officer had found his way into the Sons of the Fire and soon found himself in the service of his Clan Prince. He’d been the one responsible for transforming the Prince’s security forces into an army.

Beside the Clan Prince, walked another of his inner circle. Duur was an ex-Kill Pack soldier and thus a highly sought after commodity in the security market. He chose his clients carefully, never willing to serve those unworthy of his protection. Duur judged himself by the targets he protected and had very high standards. In Prince Roor he had found his true purpose, a being worth dedicating his life to serve. He himself was not of Clan Woodan, but it hadn’t mattered to the Prince when he was hired as his bodyguard. Roor had taken his measure as a warrior and accepted him without condition. The fortunes of Clan Woodan were also the concerns of Duur, because the welfare of his charge was wrapped up in the fortunes of his Clan.

They walked up the stone path to the walls of the Tooth, the name given to the fortress that defended the Woodan Clan late into the Clan Wars. The Tooth guarded the mountain pass to what was now the industrious mining town of Guuw, where the Glow in the Dark Mining Company gorged on deep deposits of nickel. Snow fell on the ramparts of the Tooth. Warriors walked the thick battlements, but they were careful not to use the scopes of their rifles to view the Clan Prince or they would have to personally answer to Duur. Duur was especially sensitive to being scoped, something he had picked up in his service with the Kill Packs. Instead the sentry took a brief look through his binoculars, before radioing in to his superiors. Moments later, an ancient bronze bell rang out, announcing the Prince’s return to the residents of the fortress, as it had for centuries before.

The sentry at the gates, who had been cradling his assault rifle, assumed a position of royal salute with his rifle, as his Prince approached. The ramp had been recently swept clean of snow upon hearing of his arrival.

“Huurg,” smiled Roor, acknowledging the warrior by name. “You look well enough to bring down a bull with your own jaws.”

“Thank you, my Prince,” grinned Huurg. “I had my teeth filed just this morning.”

The Clan Prince and his personal bodyguard then moved through the open gateway and inside the Tooth. Here the Clan Wars had not ended. It was an ancient fortress remodeled to fight in the age of cannons and then later outfitted with modern infrastructure. The royal family of the Woodan Clan had taken care over the years to ensure that the Tooth was properly maintained, not just as a symbol of clan power, but also as a refuge against uncertain times. It was a matter of pride and tradition that it be so.

“Go get some rest, Duur,” ordered the Clan Prince. “I’ll give you a call before we leave.”

“Of course my Prince,” nodded Duur. “Right after I check in with security.”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way, my friend.”

Duur walked away from his charge, heading straight to the security post, a large stone building, built up against the wall. Long ago the stone garrison had been filled with the warriors of Clan Woodan, who were charged with defending the walls of the Tooth against all enemies. Technology might have changed but that had not.

Roor made his way to the central keep, where in times gone past the warriors of the Woodan Clan would have made their final stand against attackers who had breached the walls. Like the rest of the fortress it had been given a face-lift by the age of gunpowder and rebuilt to resist the bombardment of the heavy guns towards the end of the Clan Wars.

The Clan Prince entered the keep, receiving the salutes of a pair of guards posted at the heavy doors. Roor walked past the main dining hall, where his ancestors had held feasts through the ages and was finally stopped at the door of a receiving room by an older guard, named Urooq. The guard saluted and then checked with the occupant of the room before admitting the Clan Prince.

“My Prince, your mother awaits you,” announced the guard, his fur marred by scars and age, the guard who watched over the matriarchal figure of the Woodan Clan.

“Clan Mother,” announced Urooq, the old guard bowing his head. “I present your son, Prince Roor of the Woodan Clan.”

As Prince Roor stepped into the private chambers of his mother, the old guard left with just a nod, told to leave by a subtlest gesture from his charge. The heavy oak doors were closed behind him. The Clan Mother was reclining on a couch, it’s legs made from the sculpted claws of dragons, beings now extinct in all but a few nations of Wysteria. There had once been dragons in the Indomitable Borderlands, but a being so highly prized by hunters could not last long against the Grendels.

“You risk much, my son,” said the Clan Mother, the tone quietly warning her son. “Your enemies will soon move against you.”

“I risk more by inaction,” retorted Roor, doing his best to keep his passions in check. “How long could Clan Woodan stand by while its fortunes slowly bled away? Yarooo takes control of Isla Vista and who gets the mining rights? A refugee corporation from Santa Barbara that Yarooo just bought a controlling interest in. Yarooo mines the Moon and the Glow in the Dark Mining Corporation is pushed aside. Our Clan’s lifeblood flows through the veins of our mines! Our Clan owns the mightiest mining company in the Grendels and Yarooo looks to dethrone us with his hybrid human-gnoll abomination of a company.”

“But did it have to come to this?”

“I tried working with Yarooo,” said Roor emphatically, gesturing with his claws. “I did more than anyone else to fuel the industrial machines of the Indomitable Borderlands. But where in the Corporate Ministry is Clan Woodan represented? The Minister of Transport?”

“It took us decades to before we were a power in the Corporate Councils if you remember,” suggested the Clan Mother. “Your grandfather worked hard to improve the standing of his clan, while on the council.”

“Yarooo put an end to that too,” growled Roor. “We were lucky to come out of his coup de tat with our hides. For as long as the Corporate Ministry remains the fortunes of Clan Woodan will be diminished. It’s time we found out how truly lucky Yarooo is.”

“Taking on Yarooo is a dangerous game, my son,” stated the Clan Mother. “You risk not just yourself but all of Clan Woodan in this gambit. Others have tried to topple Yarooo and their bones are scattered from the mountaintops to the sea. They are gone and Yarooo remains.”

“Not everyone in the Corporate Ministry is happy with new world order, Mother. If we can turn just one of the highest ranked gnolls in Hackleburg against Yarooo, his power base will crumble. I think you know who I’m talking about.”

“He won’t talk to you,” said the Clan Mother.

“That’s why I must send you, my Mother. I think he’ll listen to you.”

“Do you really think he’ll betray the Corporate Ministry for the sake of our Clan?”

“It’s not just our corporate fortunes but our culture that is under attack! Everywhere you can see the pollution of human ideas in the market place. Once the Grendels warriors prowled Wysteria as predators. Now our warriors are being used to stabilize the war zones of the region. To bring peace! For what? So we can buy dolls for our children made in Pangaelica? Our nation has become an abomination of alien influences under Yarooo. He needs to be stopped before it’s too late to salvage our culture, from this ill tide.”

“What about the warriors in Juulan you killed? Where is their better World? They were true Sons of the Fire and the Woodan Clan army butchered them like animals!”

“It’s the purpose of those who believe strongly to die for their cause. Now it’s up to the rest of us to give their death’s meaning,” stated Roor, grimly. “Mother, I need you to arrange the meeting. For the good of our clan.”

“I’ll arrange the meeting,” sighed the Clan Mother. “You just make sure to deal with Yarooo before he comes for you. I won’t let you destroy everything your forefathers worked for because you got sloppy.”

“You worry too much, my Mother,” bowed the Prince.

Central Command sent the 11th Mountain Division to Juulan, where the private army of the Woodan Clan was currently in control of the city. The mountain division had come in by helicopter to a staging area just outside the city. The first members of the advance party to arrive were sent out to establish reconnaissance patrols or begin digging in to cover the landing zone, while the rest of the division arrived. Once the boots on the ground reached their magic number, the heavy logistics helicopters came in, bringing their tactical vehicles, artillery, SAM batteries, heavy equipment, and stores. During the whole day it took for them to arrive and organize at their mountain base, the army of the Woodan Clan in Juulan did nothing. They didn’t send out patrols or snipers against the massing force of the Grendel Expeditionary Force at all.

Brigadier General Ruukwa, the commanding officer of the 11th Mountain Division, delivered a rousing speech to the troops in the base over the PA system, receiving jubilant howls that echoed throughout the mountain valley. The Brigadier General issued final orders and within the hour the 11th Mountain Division broke camp and began advancing on Juulan, with the overwhelming firepower of a Grendel division at the ready.

None opposed their advance. At the outskirts of the city, the private army of the Woodan Clan and the 11th Mountain Division met. The warriors from both sides met and embraced, howling to the glory of Clan Woodan. It was after all largely from the lands of Clan Woodan that the 11th Mountain Division was recruited. Ruukwa and Commander Hurmiir shook paws when they met at the shot up provincial administrative buildings, meeting as fellow warriors of the Clan Woodan.

“We have much work to do,” grinned Brigadier General Ruukwa. “I have a feeling central command will not approve of my tactical deployment.”

“It is good to see you again, Ruukwa,” laughed Commander Hurmiir. “The blood of our clan runs true in your warriors.”

It wasn’t long before reports coming to Central Command began to contradict the intelligence they were gathering. One source after another confirmed their fears. An entire division of Grendel soldiers had joined the insurrection in the Koorlon Province. Some began to question what would happen if they sent another division of soldiers to Juulan.

It was another brisk morning in the office of Yarooo, the Warleader and Benevolent Dictator for Life. It was another day for the leaders of the Grendel’s government to discuss events unfolding at home and around the world.

“I told you this would happen,” growled War Minister Fang, hammering his clawed paw on the desk. “I told you and you ordered me to send the 11th Mountain Division to Juulan anyways! Now the resistance movement in the Koorlon Province has become a full blown rebellion.”

“It was necessary,” stated Yarooo, strumming his claws on his ancient desk, a sign of his growing agitation.

“To see where they stood?” demanded Fang, the Minister of War. “I warned you that sending them to Juulan would push their loyalties too far. We should have deployed them to Isla Vista or anywhere, just not Juulan.”

I thought it was brilliant,” interjected Baruum, the Foreign Affairs Minister, who’d just finished sending off a flurry of correspondence across Wysteria before this morning’s meeting.

“Brilliant!” glowered Fang, his predator eyes narrowing. “Not only did we just hand the rebels a fully equipped mountain division, but before deploying they all but looted their base for the cause.”

“It was necessary, because the loyalties of the 11th Mountain Division were already all but assured,” stated Yarooo. “Because if they were elsewhere they would have been capable of opening up a new front against us at a time of their own choosing.”

“We could have transferred the divisional headquarters overseas and put loyal Grendels in place. If we didn’t ask them to fight against their own clan we could have kept them loyal,” ranted Fang.

“They were Woodan Clan when they enlisted and they aren’t any less Woodan Clan for all their time in the Grendel Expeditionary Forces,” pointed out Yarooo. “If we put a transplanted headquarters into place, by now their subordinates would have led a mutiny and killed them. Then we’d be short a perfectly good divisional headquarters staff and still have a rogue division on the loose.”

“Now I have to test the loyalties of more divisions under fire to destroy the one that defected,” growled Fang. “If I send four divisions and one of them changes sides, this provincial rebellion will stretch its legs and start wandering around the countryside.”

“Send the 6th Mountain Division,” suggested Yarooo. “I doubt they’ll throw in with the Woodan Clan. Add three divisions from the industrial heartland, some Kill Packs, and you should have what you need.”

“The 6th Mountain Division,” said Fang. “They’re recruited from the Yaator Clan, ancestral enemies of the Woodan. Are you trying to restart the Clan Wars?”

“The Woodan Clan already restarted it,” pointed out Baruum, getting murderous glance from Fang for his troubles. “We have to be the ones to finish it this time.”

“Dredging up ancestral clan hatreds right now is madness,” growled Fang. “What if it doesn’t end there? What if the other clans begin picking sides? We could lose control!”

“Then we’d better get control now,” said Yarooo. “Are four divisions going to be enough?”

“Should be enough, even in the mountains. The interior divisions would have to be airborne and air cavalry troops,” pondered Fang aloud, the anger still in his voice. “They’ll need air mobility to move around in the Koorlon Province. Thunder, but the weather is horrible there this time of year.”

“I’m certain that trying to delay our use of air assets was all part of the plan,” suggested Yarooo.

“Not much point waging an all out air strike campaign anyways,” sighed Fang, a former air force pilot himself.

“Why not?” asked Baruum.

“The mountains around the enemy will be filled with SAM batteries that we’d have to fly passed. They’ll also be using the old defensive emplacements built to defend our mining resources from invaders,” said Fang. “Except for selective air strikes, all we’ll be doing is making rubble. Obstacles for our forces and cover for theirs.”

“That and there’s really no way to know whose side the bombs will land on till it’s too late,” added Yarooo.

“Sadly, too true,” lamented Fang. “Well thanks for ruining my morning. I’m now off to meet with some unhappy generals.”

War Minister Fang left the office and went in search of his central command staff. He was in a foul mood, as his generals would soon learn for themselves.

“How was your trip to New Innisfree?” Yarooo asked his Foreign Affairs Minister, after watching his old friend leave in a huff.

“Productive,” replied Baruum. “They’re really reaching out for foreign trade and investment. I left Hakiguur behind to tidy things up, but the negotiations for the trade deal finished up nicely.”

“I could use some good news once in a while,” smiled the Benevolent Dictator for Life.

“I’m concerned though that New Innisfree might be escalating the conflict in some of the region’s crisis zones. In Hargland they’re not making much of a mess, but with Krensonia they’ve gone over the top. They’re demanding war reparations from a country they’ve never been to war with and demanding to land weapons inspectors to verify the claims that the Gaias don’t have anymore biological weapons or nukes. The Gaians countered by requesting a third party, so I offered to send a weapons inspection team. The sooner this mess is over the sooner New Innisfree stops poking them until they lose their temper.”

“If the Gaians accept, just make sure you’re thorough,” advised Yarooo. “I don’t want to take the chance the Gaians are lying and get blamed for some genocide because someone whined we did a sloppy job. It could come back to haunt us somewhere down the line.”

“I understand the possible repercussions, but getting this thing settled makes the risks worthwhile,” replied Baruum, before changing the topic. “What of Fang? You saw him. This rebellion is tearing him apart.”

“That is not a line of questioning that is open to you,” growled Yarooo, his withering gaze upon the Foreign Affairs Minister.

“Of course, my Warleader,” bowed Baruum, suddenly realizing he was on dangerous ground.

Warrant Officer Woor sat sleepily in the passenger seat of a medium logistics vehicle, as it bounced down the rough back roads that surrounded the army base. The truck had been put into taxi service for the morning, with the benches folded out in the walled flatbed. Last night, he and everyone else at the base had been celebrating the Feast of Duukar’s Ridge, celebrating one of the Kill Packs most heroic battles. The legendary stand had come during the USSR-North Alerican War. A Grendel general had called down a nuke on his own lines, when it appeared that the enemy would overrun them. The fighting in the aftermath of the nuke had been the thing of legends for the units involved, a victory for the ages to remember. In middle of the goram night the phone rang at the base duty office. He’d been getting nicely drunk with other senior non-commissioned officers, in the Sergeant’s Mess, when the duty sergeant gave him the news. Except for a quartermaster he needed to work with, Woor was the only one of them summoned to duty.

“Sucks to be you,” a fellow Warrant Officer howled, while raising a glass of beer to toast his good fortune.

And here he was picking up his drunken soldiers wherever Woor could find them. They’d been given eight hours notice to move and they’d need all of it just to find his troops and shake off last night’s drunken observances to the recent past.

He’d only been back in the Indomitable Borderlands for three months. He was a senior non-commissioned officer in a company of Kill Pack tasked with mountain operations. After the joint mission with Undivulged Principles in the nation of Liberal Liberals ended with the death of nearly everyone involved, he thought the Kill Packs were finished with him. To his surprise he was given a plum seven-month security tasking at the Grendel embassy in Undivulged Principles. He wasn’t completely surprised. The little girl he’d helped rescue on that doomed mission had made quite an impression on him and he did speak the local language. Still, after seven months Woor had become restless. He was an elite soldier and missed the intensity of being with the Kill Packs. As soon as he returned to the Indomitable Borderlands they’d promoted him from Sergeant to Warrant Officer and given him a platoon of Kill Pack soldiers to train. He’d only been back a few months but most of the faces were still as familiar as the day he’d left on embassy duty.

Once they reached the small town that supported the military base, they began stopping at one residence after another, picking up soldiers who were barely awake after partying late into the morning. The truck lurched to a stop in front of one of the suburban dwellings at the side of the road and Woor looked out the open window to see a large gnoll face down on the lawn. The Warrant Officer, slid open the small window in the back of the truck’s cab and shouted at the soldiers sitting in the back of the truck.

“Two of you get out and throw him in the truck. Someone else go inside and get his kit.”

Orders were quickly given to soldiers of lesser rank, while a Master Corporal hopped out and knocked on the front door. The two Kill Pack soldiers were in the process of dragging the unconscious body from the lawn to the truck when the front door opened abruptly. The Master Corporal barely dodged in time as an unseen arm hurled a set of military webbing out the doorway, followed by a helmet, and a patrol pack.

“And you can keep him!” growled the feminine voice, before the door was slammed in the Master Corporal’s face.

The Master Corporal shook his head and gathered up the soldier’s kit tossed out on the lawn.

“They should be sending her to fight the enemy,” howled one of the warriors, as soon as the Master Corporal got close to the truck. The rest of the troops were laughing, as the Master Corporal threw the kit in and hauled himself back onto the flatbed.

“Quiet down, you,” growled the Master Corporal, before breaking into a grin and pointing down to the still unconscious soldiers. “Show some respect for the dead.”

Welcome aboard Guur, smiled Warrrant Officer Woor, looking back at the huge body of a drunken gnoll stretched out in the back of the truck. Woor shook his head in disbelief before ordering the truck’s driver to continue to the next address. Guur wasn’t just a born soldier; he was the only other Grendel survivor from his mission in Liberal Liberals.

Allen McNab was overseeing the laying of the railway that would connect Steelburg with Uranium City, as part of the Grendels new rail expansion project. The specifications of the rail line demanded the track be of the highest quality to sustain the speed and weight of the traffic using it. A forest of white oak had been put to the saw for the crossties alone, cut down during the months when the sap moved the least to produce the best quality. The wood for the crossties wasn’t just high quality, it was properly seasoned to hold the spikes better and better resist shearing from the weight of trains going over them. This railway would carry shipments between the wealthiest mines of the Grendels and one of its most important manufacturing centres.

As the point man for the CN Railway Company, from the nation of Tyryte, McNab was here to make sure things got done on schedule. He could have been relaxing in a nice office in Hackleburg, but he needed to be out on the line to get a feel for the work being done. Where he was standing, the roadbed had already been prepared and stretched far into the distance. The contractors had done a good job in providing a smooth, level surface and had been under a lot of pressure to provide just that. The track-laying machine was slowly coming closer to his current position, at a rate of a mile and a half a day. From his vantage point, Allen could see them clearly through his binoculars, a swarm of human activity as the track was being laid.

The railway man from Tyryte had been promised security from the Grendels while they worked and they had delivered. Initially, he’d had one thousand soldiers of the Grendel Expeditionary Forces watching over him, along with occasional air patrols. The first time Allen McNab saw a Grendel combat helicopter he saw the powerful twin rotors and wanted to know their lift capacity. Work would go a lot faster if I had a bunch of them, thought the railway man. At first he thought the security presence of the gnolls was overreacting. That was until the first time someone on the crew encountered a local predator and practically needed therapy before they could go back to work. They had some pretty unfriendly beasties here in the Indomitable Borderlands. The security was just fine.

It was in the last few days that he’d become a bit concerned. First he heard some sketchy details about a small revolt in a city called Juulan in the Koorlon Province. The next thing he knew his security detachment had been increased to ten thousand soldiers and the helicopters were almost always overhead. The troops that made up the massive security presence were careful to keep out of his way, but the recent mobilization made him wonder if they were in danger of attack. Not my job, shrugged the railway man. Flinch now and the Grendels will never hire humans to work on their infrastructure again. Still, with all those extra helicopters buzzing around, surely they could spare a couple to haul some heavy equipment for him.

Prince Roor of the Woodan Clan risked much coming here, but he could no longer afford to play it safe. The stakes were just too high. The fact that he was in Casino City, when his forces held the city of Juulan, was one thing. The fact that he was in the hotel penthouse owned by the War Minister of the Indomitable Borderlands was something else altogether. The Clan Prince appreciated how easily this might result in his arrest and subsequent execution. He risked everything on his mother’s connections and diplomacy; her ties to the powers that be. If that trust was misplaced by evening’s end he would be in a cell, interrogated by some very unsympathetic gnolls.

It would be difficult to determine, by the time he was left waiting, what fate awaited him. On the one hand, the War Minister wouldn’t want him on his premises longer than he could help it. Having covert meetings with your leader’s enemies wasn’t the best way to get on Yarooo’s good side. On the other hand, Roor might be kept waiting as long as Fang needed to be certain he could make the meeting undetected. Duur, his personal bodyguard, had objected to the get together, mostly because the terms stipulated his absence. Like the base-jumping he’d done years earlier, sometimes the object of the game was to leap into the abyss to find out where you stood.

He took the time to watch some television on the huge plasma screen, something he hadn’t done in a long time, while he relaxed in the lavishly decorated room. The Borderland News Network was going on about international wars and plagues that he could care less about. As always a lot of local focus was on the economy, but the Clan Woodan insurrection was what had really caught people’s attention. Sitting here in a comfortable chair was a time to be savored, not misspent. He didn’t know the next time he’d get a chance to just relax.

The door opened and War Minister Fang walked in, alone. Out of politeness, Roor pointed the remote control at the plasma screen and immediately turned it off. Playtime was over. That the War Minister was alone was a good sign. True he might have the neighbouring rooms stuffed with security, but then maybe not. If the meeting wasn’t a trap, Fang wouldn’t profit from involving any more gnolls than he absolutely had to.

“Get you a drink?” asked the War Minister, walking over to the bar.

“Yes,” replied the Clan Prince.

He’d already combed it and the rest of the place for concealed weapons and surveillance devises. Other than some weapons of ancient design adorning the walls, whose blades were well maintained, the room was safe.

“I’ve got some old scotch from Epona that I’ve been saving,” offered Fang, pulling out a pair of crystal glasses and putting some ice in them.

“Epona,” quietly growled Roor. “Do you have some Buurn? I like my whiskey domestic.”

“Of course,” smiled Fang, pulling out a new bottle from the cabinet. “Buurn it is.”

Fang filled the two, hand cut, crystal glasses generously and handed one to Roor, who nodded in thanks. Clan Royalty were always vigilant about being poisoned, but they were also practiced in diplomacy.

“Quite a mess you’ve made of things,” remarked the War Minister, gesturing with his whiskey glass. “This thing of yours is threatening to break into civil war.”

“We’re beyond classifying my position in Juulan,” stated Roor. “It was necessary for Clan Woodan to stand up for Grendels everywhere.”

“The Sons of the Fire did that and you butchered them!” growled Fang.

“If I’d allowed Yarooo to send in the army against the Sons of the Fire their sacrifice would have been in vain. The army’s presence in the Koorlon Province would have caused a revolt. They would have murdered us with the weapons we supplied them with. Now we hold a position of strength,” stated Roor, also gesturing with his whiskey glass.

“Strength?” scoffed Fang. “I’ve sent the Grendels Expeditionary Forces to Juulan. They’ll smash you to pieces!”

“What if they were delayed?” asked the Clan Prince.

“Delayed?” retorted Fang. “What possible reason would I have to delay the army?”

“I know your heart, Fang,” said Roor. “You don’t like seeing the Grendel’s culture polluted by alien influences anymore than I do. You’ve seen what Yarooo has done to the Indomitable Borderlands. He’s sold our heritage to the humans! If we don’t act now it will be too late to save our people!”

“Yarooo has entrusted me with stabilizing the Aldaron Isles crisis zone,” said Fang. “He needs me. The Grendels need me to keep the shipping lanes clear for trade.”

“Listen to yourself?” shouted Roor. “Stabilize the crisis zone? The Grendels are a warrior race. We should be preying on the weaker nations, not helping them like some nurse of the infirm! The weak do not deserve the resources they hold. The warrior spirit of the Grendels shouldn’t be muzzled for the sake of making the humans happy. The humans are the enemy. The sooner the Grendels realize that the sooner we can become what we were meant to be, the hunters among the herd.”

“Yarooo and I share a blood bond,” growled the War Minister. “How could you ask me to save our heritage and at the same time break the Warrior Code?”

“I don’t need you to move against him directly,” pleaded the Clan Prince. “Just slow your army’s advance. Give me more time and I will force the Grendels to embrace the heritage they’ve turned his back on. When I’m done, Yarooo will be forced to join us in restoring our people’s culture. Then together we can stop the pollution of humanity on our soil, but I need more time.”

“I’ve sent the 6th Mountain Division,” explained Fang. “They’re recruited from the Yaator Clan, your traditional enemies. Even if I wanted to, nothing is going to hold them back.”

“It’s snowing in Juulan,” noted Roor. “The high passes will be treacherous.”

The cold winter still held the Barrier Mountains in its grasp. It hadn’t snowed for days, but all could feel the coming storm.

Inside the Tooth, the ancestral fortress of the Woodan Clan, Prince Roor was concluding an important business transaction. It didn’t have anything to do with the clan owned Glow in the Dark Mining Corporation or their other corporate holdings. The Woodan Clan royalty relied on highly paid and qualified executives to handle the day-to-day operations of their corporations.

Armed gnolls unloaded crates from the back of a truck. The Clan Prince nodded to one of the nearby gnolls, who pried off the lid of a random crate with a crowbar. Roor pulled out an assault rifle and checked the action. He was satisfied with the result.

“Kiim, rumours of your dedication to service and support are under reported,” grinned Roor, still fondling the Rapier assault rifle.

“Your efforts to reclaim our people’s heritage do not go unnoticed, my Prince,” bowed Kiim. “You remind us all that the days of glory on the field of battle are not lost.”

Gnolls continued unloading the crates of guns that arrived at the castle. Kiim took his leave of the Clan Prince and departed aboard a truck, on route to a nearby heliport. The arms dealer was a busy gnoll and was needed back in his office at Wolf Pack Munitions. He’d had his tour of the Tooth and spent some time in the company of the Clan Prince, part of the price of his involvement.

“It’s beneath you to be dealing with a common arms dealer, my Prince,” protested Duur, his gaze on the retreating truck. “He’s a parasite.”

“The path of blood we now walk demands I deal with gnolls like Kiim,” replied Roor, tossing the assault rifle into the air where Duur snatched it in one fluid motion. “My warriors have good hearts but they need better guns to express themselves. Walk with me, my friend.”

Duur bowed his head towards the Clan Prince and followed him to one of the fortresses outer buildings, one off limits to all but a select few. The guard at the door admitted them after checking with others inside.

“This is not a battle that can be won with rifles alone,” lectured Roor. “If I had a ten thousand more rifles and strong arms to carry them into battle it would still not be enough to achieve victory.”

The pair of gnolls walked down the hall of the ancient building, the insides of which were anything but ancient. Beneath the façade of the building’s exterior was a modern laboratory. Through the laboratory viewing windows on one side of the hallway, occasionally a gnoll wearing a full hazard suit would lift his gaze towards the visitors. Inside the labs were caged monkeys and humans, in varying stages of incapacitation.

At the end of the hall, a tall gnoll got up from behind his desk to greet his benefactor. The door to the office wasn’t closed.

“You honour us with your visit, my Prince,” bowed the doctor, setting aside his laptop.

“On your efforts rests our hopes of victory, Yuuron,” replied Prince Roor. “Where are we at?”

“We’ll be ready to deploy in ten days,” reported Doctor Yuuron. “The Flavian Flu cure has forced us to expand our stocks of other biological strains for your operation.”

“We’re falling behind schedule, doctor,” noted Roor. “I’ve done what I can to buy us more time, but in the future you’d do well to anticipate these setbacks. The best minds in Wysteria were working on a cure for the Flavian Flu.”

“My Prince,” bowed the doctor. “The Flavian Flu is a very unique virus. There was nothing to suggest that anyone would come up with anything remotely resembling a cure for years, if ever. There are even still some doubts about the new treatments in some quarters of the scientific community.”

“But a cure has been found,” pressed the Prince.

“Yes my Prince, it would seem that a cure has been found. We are working hard to grow more biological material for your campaign, but you have to understand that this is a very delicate process. It cannot be rushed.”

“Of course, doctor,” nodded Roor. “But remember that time is running out for us all.”

“I will do what is possible, my Prince.”

“That is all any prince could ask,” smiled Roor, taking his leave of the doctor. “I’ll let you get back to your work.”

The Clan Prince and his personal bodyguard left the confines of the lab and went outside into the winter air again. A light dusting of snow had begun to blanket the ancient fortress.

“Duur, I will be remaining in the Tooth for the next few days. While we’re here I want you to make arrangements for the extermination of the human responsible for curing the Flavian Flu. Have my secretary make available whatever golden bonds are required. He has inconvenienced us with his life and that cannot be forgiven.”

“Your will, my Prince.”

The Kill Pack soldiers weren’t in the best of spirits, but some well-timed yelling at by their ranking members managed to get them focused again. They were on a military airstrip, north of Munition, loading a cargo jet with their kit and supplies.

“Everyone and their goram kitten is off to war and we’re going on alpine exercises for a month,” growled one special forces trooper.

“We’ve gone from top platoon to joke platoon,” growled his comrade, with a quick, side-glance at the platoon’s warrant officer.

Standing apart from the line of troops, passing rucksacks and palates, one to another, were Warrant Officer Woor and Master Corporal Guur. The two warriors were reunited after the disastrous rescue mission in Liberal Liberals, a joint mission with CUP that had been anything but standard operating procedures from start to finish.

“They’ll get over it once they’re in the field,” grinned the Warrant Officer, tapping his heavy boot on the fine dusting of snow that had recently fallen.

“Can’t say as I blame them,” admitted the Master Corporal, staring at the cargo jet with mixed feelings. “No mission in Munisha. No mission in Juulan. The other platoons will hold it over us for years, Warrant.”

“You don’t join the Kill Packs for personal wellness,” replied Woor, turning to face his subordinate. “We follow orders and do what we’re told. If command feels the best place for us is training, then I’m certain they’ve got a good reason.”

“There’s just one thing bothering me, Warrant.”

“What’s that?”

“You say that we’re going on alpine exercise for a month,” began the Master Corporal. “But we’re shipping out with a lot less ammo and rations than we’d normally take, but a lot more high end operational gear than you’d take on alpine training. It doesn’t add up, Warrant.”

“Master Corporal, until I say otherwise, you’re to keep your observations to yourself. Am I understood?”

“Your will, Warrant.”

Winter in the Indomitable Borderlands was slowly coming to an end. Snow still fell in the mountains and the interior, but on the coast the weather was slowly changing from numbing cold rain to just plain old rain. The sun had come out for the day though and gnolls everywhere were on the move to take advantage of the break in the recent storms.

Yarooo and Fang, two of the most powerful gnolls of the Indomitable Borderlands, were out on a firing range, testing new weapons that would soon make their way to the army if they passed this final inspection. Since the age of gunpowder it was a tradition that Warleaders test new weapons and kit before they were given to their soldiers. It made the Warleader accountable to his warriors for what was provided to them and it was not a duty that Yarooo took lightly. Years ago, Yarooo had himself been in battle as an elite Kill Pack soldier. Fang, the War Minister, while more knowledgeable about flying combat jets than small arms, still knew his way around a gun. As the War Minister it was important that he also be present to also assure the quality of new weapon designs that the thriving arms industry was trying to sell to his army. Both gnolls truly enjoyed these outings for their picnic feeling, complete with guns and explosives. What more could a gnoll want?

Yarooo was standing on the rocket range with a product from Borderland Industrial resting on his right shoulder. Range staff was on hand, as well as representatives from the company.

“If this rocket hangs fire,” stated Yarooo firmly, “I’m going to stuff the gnoll who designed it down the tube to get the rocket.”

“There’ll be no need my Warleader,” bowed the Borderland Industrial representative, laughing politely. “The Dragon AT VII is the most reliable launcher system of its kind. We have three types of sighting available for targeting the enemy: laser, optical, and speculative. The best tanks out there have alarms in them to detect enemy lasers and some even have counter measures. The optic sights are always reliable, but with all of the Dragon line of launchers we use the 9mm coaxial barrel to put rounds on the target to confirm you’re on. The rocket itself is wire guided for maximum accuracy.”

“It’s lighter than I expected,” observed the Warleader.

“It makes it more appealing for the foreign market,” replied the sales representative. “For a human it still represents a substantial load to carry, but it’s manageable.”

The range staff went through the readying and fire procedures with the Warleader, before the rocket was sent down range at a rusted hulk, 400 meters in the distance. The rocket kicked up the dust and heated up the area around the launcher, with a plume of flame erupting out the back. The missile itself rocked the target, bringing praise for his aim by those nearby.

“I like it,” grinned Yarooo, putting the launcher down. “I want to fire some more before I’ll sign off though. Fang, you’ve got to try this!”

Both Fang and Yarooo fired off five rockets each before they were satisfied, leaving a trail of wires on the ground to the rusted vehicles they were targeting.

“I’ll want one sent to my ranch, with twenty rockets,” ordered Yarooo, to one of his aides. “For some pests I’ve been having problems with.”

They broke from the firing ranges for lunch. While the salesmen of the arms manufacturers really wanted to sit with the leaders of their nation, their leaders weren’t interested. A polite word, meaningful glances, and the cocking of weapons among their leader’s personal security detachment quickly convinced the sales representatives that perhaps giving their clients some alone time wasn’t such a bad idea after all. Yarooo and Fang sat on the bank of the firing point, eating their beef stuffed sandwiches.

“I feel that we may have waited too long to act,” stated War Minister Fang. “The Clan Woodan uprising could get very ugly, before it can be crushed.”

“Exposing a conspiracy is a lot like making a great sauce, old friend. You start with the basic stock ingredients. Then you turn up the heat and slowly reduce the ingredients, until your enemies are revealed in their purest form,” stated Yarooo, before breaking into a grin. “The trick is not to burn the pan.”

“When did you learn so much about cooking?” asked Fang.

“When I was an officer with the Kill Packs, I was living on my own,” explained Yarooo, gesturing with a partially eaten beef sandwich. “I didn’t know how to cook and I wanted to get married for the right reasons. You know, power and money. Since I couldn’t afford to eat out all the time, I convinced my commander that it would be tactically prudent to send me on a cooking course. I told him that if I was on an extended mission behind enemy lines I could take a job as a cook to blend in the with local population.”

“You’re tyen-sah kidding me!” protested Fang, steadying himself to keep from rolling down the slope of the firing point, laughing.

“That’s not the best part,” managed Yarooo, himself laughing. “When I got back I convinced my commander I needed to go on a bakers course for the sake of operational diversity and I got that one too!”

Prince Roor was still at the Tooth. It was the ancient fortress from which Clan Woodan had defended some of its mining interests over the centuries and from where they’d plotted the ruin of their enemies. It seemed necessary to the Prince that he be here tonight, doing the same. He was in the hall addressing a small group of chosen warriors. They were members of the Sons of the Fire and of Clan Woodan, every one of them committed to the cause. They believed hard. No doubt they’d die hard.

“In just a few days my brothers,” said the Prince, raising a goblet to toast their upcoming mission, “you will set forth from the Tooth and the lands of Clan Woodan as the salvation of our people. You will be the paws that reach out and exterminate the pestilence of humanity from our lands. Once more we will be a pure people, untainted by the stink of humanity! My brothers, to the future!”

“To the future!” echoed the toast from the twelve gnolls, at the table with the Clan Prince.

They stood and drank to the coming battle with fermented blood, a drink now rarely seen outside of the lands of the mountain clans. Afterwards, the Clan Prince excused himself on pressing business and they toasted some more. It was going to be a wild night at the Tooth by the looks of things.

Roor went down the hallway and up the stairs to the door where an old, gnarled gnoll warrior stood guard. The Urooq bowed and went inside the room he guarded for a moment, before reappearing. There were some who gossiped that the old guard was in fact little more than the unofficial consort to his mother, but such talk was dangerous. The Clan Mother was not forgiving of such talk and Urooq was still a formidable warrior.

“The Clan Mother is ready to receive you, Prince Roor.”

Roor entered his mother’s private chambers warily. The Clan Mother was a figure of great influence in the Woodan Clan and her political power reached much further than her symbolic role. She was practiced in the art of politics, and had spent a lifetime building up contacts, collecting secrets, and stockpiling favours.

“It is a good evening to be feasting, my mother,” said Prince Roor. “You should join the festivities. The warriors are in high spirits.”

“You should not be so overconfident, my son,” lectured the Clan Mother. “You’ve already failed on two occasions thus far on your campaign. First your people completely failed to destroy the Juggernaut station. If you’d done just this, you would have crippled our primary mining competitor and I could have seen that the lunar mining continued under new management.”

“Nothing is certain in space, my mother. We knew going in that there were many uncertainties.”

“Still, you spent a fortune accomplishing the destruction of an obsolete space station that had absolutely no value to your enemies. In fact, all its destruction did was to encourage them to speed up contingency plans against future attacks against Juggernaut, making it harder to make a second attempt,” insisted the Clan Mother. “You moved before you were ready and you failed. You had one member of the assault team changed at the last minute, allowing them no time for orbital training at the Snake Eyes resort. You have only made your enemies stronger by your failure.”

“Nobody knows what went wrong on Furlab 3,” admitted Roor, “but the plan was sound. We had every belief that we would succeed.”

“But you didn’t, did you? And now your germ warfare schedule is delayed yet again, while our warriors make what will most likely be their last stand in Juulan,” accused the Clan Mother. “Any more delays and by the time you make your grand statement, we will already be long dead by Yarooo’s paws. I arranged for your meeting with Fang, but will the time you negotiated with him be enough?”

“The occupation of Juulan succeeded beyond expectations,” retorted Prince Roor. “The enemy sent soldiers recruited from our own lands against us to bolster our garrison.”

“What Yarooo did was to put all of his enemies in one place,” corrected the Clan Mother. “It was at Yarooo’s order, not Fang’s, that the 11th Mountain Division was sent to Juulan. With one order he tests the loyalty of the division and brings all his enemies together in one convenient target. He’s upping the ante in this little gambit of yours and you don’t even realize it. That is bad enough, but if Yarooo suspects anything about your plans of genocide for humans you will have doomed us all. It will be the end of Clan Woodan.”

“Then we had best be careful not to fail, my mother,” grinned Prince Roor, evoking a disapproving frown from the Clan Mother.

“Five minutes,” came the cautionary order from the helicopter pilot, through the internal communications channel.

The medium logistics helicopter was stuffed full of soldiers, ammo, and kit. The doors were closed and that was just as well. It was damn cold in the Barrier Mountains this time of year, fur or no fur. The twin rotors struggled to haul the bulky helicopter up through the thin mountain air, to the narrow opening in the valley, just above the trees. They were flying above the recommended altitude for helicopters, putting their trust in their pilot and Indomitable Industries. The helicopter stopped and hovered, one hundred feet over terrain too rugged to land on. The loadmaster opened up the doors on either side of the helicopter and got out of the soldier’s way.

“Ropes!”

Two ropes were tossed out the doors on either side of the cabin.

“Positions!”

Gnolls moved into position, laden down with heavy packs and webbing, standing on the helicopter’s landing struts, while hanging onto the rope by their right hand. They raised their free hand with a clenched fist to get the attention of the rappel master, crouched in the middle of the cabin, letting him know they were ready. Then the rappel master pointed to either side of the helicopter simultaneously and the gnoll soldiers began their descent to the ground, rappelling down on the ropes. They did not hesitate to launch themselves from their perch.

It was important that they jump at the same time or the helicopter would be off balance and their ride to the bottom would be a rough one. The pilot had enough troubles keeping the helicopter steady without them erratically jerking from their ropes. The descent of the soldiers on the ropes was steady and deliberate. They had to take into account that the helicopter could suddenly drop ten feet or more while hovering, especially while hovering in the thin air. Going down too quickly and the soldier might find that the ground wasn’t where they thought they’d meet it. They didn’t have the numbers on this mission to deal with broken bones.

Once the soldiers were on the ground and clear of the ropes, they ran to take up firing positions and establish a defence perimeter. The next four soldiers went down and then the last two. Aboard the helicopter, the loadmaster untied and let the ropes drop down for the troops below to recover, before flying back the way they had come.

A pair of soldiers coiled up the rope and stuffed it into sacks they lashed to their packs, before returning to cover their arcs of fire. Two minutes later, the next helicopter came, delivering a new shipment of troops by rope. Five minutes later came the last helicopter and when it was gone the platoon was alone. The Warrant Officer went from soldier to soldier to ensure that there were no mishaps from the rappel, before getting the platoon on their feet and down the trail. Scout elements had already gone ahead to prove their route.

They’d been lucky to arrive when they did. After an hour of trekking up the rough mountain path, the numbing wind picked up. The soldiers continued throughout the day, winding their way through the rough ground of the Barrier Mountains. No one spoke while they walked. All communication was done with a familiar set of hand signals they had long become fluent with.

Warrant Officer Woor turned to look back down the valley he had just climbed. Standing near the front of the column, he thought he could just make out Sergeant Kaal in his rearguard position. Had they brought an officer, it would have been the position in the order of march that Woor would have taken up. But there were no officers on this mission and that suited the Warrant Officer just fine. Now they had a challenging march through difficult terrain ahead of them. It was good to be operational again.

The Kill Pack platoon took up positions at their patrol hide, a circle of soldiers on ground, covering their arcs of fire. They were as close as they dared get to the objective without an unacceptable risk of being discovered. From here they would move forward to observe and attack the enemy. The gnoll soldiers settled into their quiet camp routines. The mountain air bit their hides with its cold, but no fires were lit. No lights were used, even in the night. Radio silence was observed. Though they could not yet hear or see the enemy, they could feel that they were near. They wouldn’t be here for very long, hours, maybe a day at most.

Warrant Woor held an orders group with soldiers picked to go on three separate reconnaissance patrols against their objective. Each patrol was comprised of just three gnolls. They certainly weren’t looking for a fight yet, they were just looking on building up first hand information about their objective. Satellite photos and maps were no substitute for seeing the ground for yourself. Warrant Woor led one of the patrols; Sergeant Kaal of the heavy weapons detachment led another; and Sergeant Varwuul of the sniper group led the last one. They each took different approaches towards the enemy objective, as much as could be helped in the mountainous terrain, each leaving an hour after the other patrol.

When the patrols returned and disseminated their information, Warrant Woor sat in the middle of the circle of soldiers and held a Kill Pack parliament with the other element leaders. They went over the basic plan and tossed a few ideas around, based on the latest knowledge gleaned by their patrols, in an attempt to make the plan better. The original rough plan was now being shaped and finalized based on the latest information and opinions. Only then did the Warrant Officer draft his final plan of attack. In reality a rough plan had been in place from the moment the mission had been given to them. It had to be because they needed to know what equipment, weapons, and soldiers to bring. When he was ready, Warrant Woor held an orders group and the soldiers made their final preparations. The clock was running. Night came fast to the mountains.

The sniper teams were the first to leave camp, four elite Grendel snipers, including Sergeant Varwuul. They would take the longest getting into their vantage positions, overlooking the target and covering the movements of the rest of the soldiers.

An hour later, the eight overburdened soldiers of the weapons detachment left the camp, with Sergeant Kaal leading them to their fire positions. As well as their assault rifles, they carried with them a heavy machine gun, a large rocket launcher, two 80mm mortars, and all of the heavy ammunition for their weapons. The other soldiers of the Kill Pack platoon were glad to give them the additional ordinance they carried for them up till now. Because of the weight of their load, four members of the assault teams went with them, to help carry the heavy rockets, mortar bombs, and machine gun ammo up to their pre-selected positions. After delivering their loads, the assault team carrying party would return back to the patrol hide. Sergeant Kaal grimly led the heavily encumbered soldiers up the slope, the cold wind biting at them. The straps of their heavy weapons and packs of ammo cut into their hides. They’d all be happier once their heavy loads reached their destination. Relieved to put down their deadly burdens, if only for just a little while. With luck they’d return much lighter after the fight. The heavy weapons were split into two groups, each to communicate by radio. The machine gun and rocket launcher were in one group, the two mortars in the other. The ground needed for each weapon was different. Mortars didn’t need line of sight to operate, with skilled soldiers using them. They comprised the direct fire and indirect fire groups.

The two demolition teams left next. They needed time to creep forward and set their charges. When the four beasts of burden of the assault group returned from carrying ammo for the weapons detachment, they got only a few minutes to catch their breath before moving out again. Warrant Officer Woor ordered the two, eight member assault groups to fall in. Moments later they were on the move, winding their way in single file along an old mountain trail. After an hour of quietly padding their way through the darkness, with frequent listening halts, they could finally see it. The Tooth was finally in sight.

From his vantage point, overlooking the Tooth, Sergeant Kaal was waiting patiently for the fight to begin. In charge of the heavy weapons detachment of the Kill Pack platoon, he was laying down in the brush, observing the ground through a magnified night vision scope mounted on his assault rifle. Here at the edge of the helicopter pad, they had an excellent view of their target, just five hundred meters from the Tooth. Kaal thought he could hear music coming from inside the ancient fortress.

The strain of hauling up all the heavy weapons and ammunition to where they were, was made all the worse by doing it quietly. They had to be quiet. They were fighting their own kind and they had good hearing. The earplugs they wore had tiny holes drilled in them that would protect their sensitive hearing when they fired their heavy weapons, but still allow for quieter sounds to filter through. Before leaving their patrol camp, they’d also taken pains to mask their scent. While they were in place some distance from the Tooth, gnolls also had a very good sense of smell. The wind could conceivably change direction and blow their scent towards sentries on the wall. Their personal camouflage wasn’t neglected, right down to the tactical fur dye, although their attack would be made in darkness. The fabric used in making their uniforms included materials designed to confuse infrared sensors, something they believed enemy sentries might have use of.

Right now it was time to hurry up and wait. With the cold wind whipping at their position, Sergeant Kaal almost wished they were on the trail again. It was warmer hauling ammo than laying down, exposed to the elements. Even with his thick winter coat, the gnoll thought it was still a bit cold out. Up ahead, closer the objective, the demolition teams would be setting their charges. They were very difficult to register on the sergeant’s night vision scope, owing to the special fabric they were wearing. It was only because he knew the plan that Kaal knew where they were and what to look for. The demolition teams moved, quietly, but deliberately. They had no interest in staying any longer under the walls of the Tooth than absolutely necessary to set their charges. The sergeant couldn’t see the demolition team on the outside of the far side of the fortress.

The two assault teams were already moving to their final staging areas. One loud crack of a twig in the woods and out would fly the parachute flares and machinegun bullets. If that happened they would still have to proceed. It would just be a whole lot messier. There was no chance to regroup and try again. Any failing of surprise was theirs and theirs alone to bear the brunt of.

The sergeant’s earpiece connecting him to the platoon radio net crackled to life, with the demolition team leader clicking his handset three times. The signal was given for the one-minute countdown. Kaal picked up the transmitter of the other radio he carried, a heavier unit.

“Air show, this is wolf pack minor, rocky now, over,” said Kaal, using his throat mike to quietly pass along the order.

“Roger wolf pack minor, rocky now, out,” crackled the reply, the volume turned down so low he could barely hear it.

Seconds later the first explosions shattered the quiet night and the main gatehouse of the Tooth. The gatehouse crumbled under what had been described during planning as an exaggerated use of shaped charges of necroplast. Debris flew high into the air, with small chips of rubble landing around the weapons detachment. Kaal felt pretty certain that none of the enemy garrisoned in the gatehouse would be coming out again. Another explosion ripped a large hole in the wall of the Tooth, on the other side of the fortress.

The moment the first explosion went off, Sergeant Kaal gave the order to the weapons detachment to open up on their predesignated targets in the Tooth. High explosive mortar bombs started landing on and around the old, stone towers. The rocket launcher team put a rocket into the central keep, while the machine gun opened up on the soldiers pouring into the courtyard. Sergeant Kaal used the platoon battle net and yells to direct the fire of the weapons detachment, to where it was needed. The battle for the Tooth was on.

The snipers attached to the Kill Pack platoon had been in position the longest but had made the most of their time. Patience was almost as important for a sniper as the shooting ability that defined them. While they waited in position, they marked targets and building exits for the coming fight. The two sniper teams were in good cover, over a kilometer from the Tooth.

The spotters were carefully checking the fortress and surrounding ground through their telescope, confirming ranges, while measuring the wind velocity and temperature. Sergeant Varwuul’s spotter, Jiir, was just as capable at handling a sniper rifle as he was. Varwuul was just the senior shot, so Jiir was designated as a spotter for this mission. On his next mission, Jiir would no doubt be the shooter and someone else the spotter.

Varwuul had been a qualified sniper in the Grendel Expeditionary Forces for twelve years, after his impressive shooting scores quickly got him separated from the rest of the pack in infantry school. He’d been involved in the fighting in the North Alerican civil war, when they’d allied with Koffee. He’d been ashore with leading elements during the liberation of Blackbears. He’d been involved in the landings against the Sacred Skull that eventually failed from a lack of ZaKommian support against their former colony. After missing out in Munisha, he thought he had a suspicious he was being saved for the war against his own people in Juulan. He had mixed feelings about the fighting, but was still surprised to be left out of the initial deployments and put on exercise. It was doubly odd, when he knew that the paperwork for him to receive the rank of Warrant Officer would be put through in the next couple of weeks. When he got his orders to be part of the mission against the Tooth, once again he had mixed feelings, but he at least he clearly understood his duty.

He’d racked up 578 confirmed kills in his military career, making him something of a celebrity in the sniper community. As a sniper though you never bragged about your kills. It just wasn’t done. The military took great pride in his accomplishments and rewarded him for his efforts on behalf of the Indomitable Borderlands. He’d received stocks, vacations, and monetary bonuses. When his 250th kill was registered, he even had lunch with Yarooo, an honour for any soldier. For his 500th kill, he’d made in the Sacred Skull campaign, he’d been awarded a seaside home to relax in.

Varwuul rested his cheek on the adjustable cheek pad of his Precision International sniper rifle. The rifle had a twenty-seven inch barrel, with light composite stock pieces, and its anti-icing qualities making it ideal even in Arctic conditions. The Precision International L207 was truly one of the best sniper rifles available today. That or Varwuul would have been using something else. The five round magazine was loaded with .338 sniper grade ammunition. The Sergeant took a long look through his scope, using his ocular implant that he’d agreed to have surgically added to enhance his natural abilities.

His spotter was alerted to the radio receiver at his ear, briefly crackling to life, as the leader of demolition teams clicked on the transmitter three times. One minute and the firefight would begin. The spotter began softly counting down by increments of ten seconds, then five seconds, to get the sniper ready to time his first shot precisely. Just two seconds before the first series of explosions tore apart the gatehouse of the Tooth the first round was fired. Sergeant Varwuul gently squeezed the electronic trigger and the bullet was away, traveling across the night to the Tooth. Over a kilometer away, the sentry on the tower had just enough time to begin raising his head before his chest exploded. Varwuul pulled the bolt back on his rifle, to clear the spent cartridge, and quickly moved onto the next shot, with the help of his spotter. The guards on the wall were falling quickly and chaos was soon enveloping the defenders of the Tooth as the heavy weapons detachment opened up on them. The Sergeant could just make out the first members of the assault teams make their way through the breach on the opposite side of the fortress from the ruined gatehouse. He shot down two more gnolls exiting the main entrance of the central keep, where a rocket fired from the weapons detachment had made a mess of things. It was the work of wolves for him this night in the mountains.

As Warrant Woor and the two assault groups crept closer to the Tooth, they could hear music coming from inside the ancient fortress. A sound system was playing an old folk song in the main hall of the keep. It was familiar, but Woor couldn’t quite remember its name. Not that it mattered much; soon an unexpected percussion number would be overwhelming the folk song. For the moment the music was a good thing, more noise to help mask their approach.

They could almost feel the presence of the snipers and weapons detachment, working in other roles to support their attack. Up ahead they knew the two demolitions teams would be finishing up their work, before linking up with them. The two assault teams moved into position at the edge of the brush and waited in the dead ground. Two soldiers laid down at the edge of the dead ground, where they observed the demolition team working at the wall to set their charges. The assault team signaled with an IR light and the demolition team signaled back. A minute later the two gnolls made their way silently from the wall and joined the assault elements of the Kill Pack platoon. The order to prepare to move was given and the countdown began.

After the first explosion tore apart the main gatehouse, only a couple seconds passed before the next explosion ripped a sizable gap through the wall in front of them, scattering chips of stone everywhere. After the debris had finished falling, the soldiers were up and running for the breach. Mortar bombs were landing on and around the towers of the fortress wall. Racing across the open ground, the first soldiers of the assault groups burst through the breach into the open courtyard beyond.

In the wake of the explosions that lit up the night sky, the detonations of rockets and deep rattle of machine gun fire filled the night. The first assault group rushed to the side of the first building they could get to and set up to cover the movement of the second team. Enemy defenders stumbled out of the main keep and other buildings that housed them. Bullets were flying everywhere. Rounds fired at them from the wall quickly dropped off, as the sniper teams plied their trade.

From his intelligence reports, Warrant Officer Woor quickly identified the disguised laboratory. He led one of the assault groups towards it, leaving the other one behind to give cover. When he got there the door wasn’t just locked it didn’t give an inch when he slammed his shoulder into it. The demolition team that was attached to him took care of that with a hastily set, shaped charge. The smoking door fell away and the assault team rushed inside, shooting. The second assault group then began moving to the lab entrance to cover them. There were snarls and howls of anger from all corners of the Tooth.

Woor could see the laboratory subjects behind the glass. When the doctor at the end of the hall got up from his desk to protest, the Warrant Officer put two rounds in his chest and didn’t even slow down. He stuffed an armful of papers down the front of his uniform and kept going. The assault team shot down six more workers before exiting the laboratory and placing a target beacon on the outside of the building. The demolitions team set a hasty booby trap on the entrance, for good measure, while the Kill Pack soldiers were still securing their perimeter. The first objective was completed.

The tower ahead of them was still falling when Woor emerged from the laboratory building. He could see the bodies tumbling amidst the debris, some shot as they tried to free themselves. The Warrant Officer’s personal radio crackled to life.

“Alpha this is Bravo, you’ve got enemy coming out of the barracks on the east wall in section strength, out,” came the voice of a sniper team observer.

Warrant Officer ran to where Guur was kneeling.

“They’re trying to rally at the barracks on the east wall,” shouted Woor into the Master Corporal’s ear, over the roar of the gunfire. “We need to clear them out before we hit the Keep.”

Guur nodded and the two assault teams were on the move again, leapfrogging their way to the new objective. The lead soldiers reached the side of the keep, to see a mortar round land outside the barracks. Enemy bodies slumped to the ground or were thrown against the building by the explosion. More enemy defenders continued to emerge from the barracks. Woor got his assault teams ready and gave the word. A pair of phosphorous grenades landed in the midst of the rallying defenders. Howls of pain pierced the sound of gunfire. The Kill Pack fired into the enemy formations, advancing and assaulting their way to the barracks. The enemy was firing back, but was having a hard time holding out against the onslaught. Then, the Kill Pack found themselves taking fire from a window in the Keep. Soldiers were being hit.

“Delta, this is Alpha,” yelled Woor into the radio. “Enemy sniper, third floor of keep, second window from south-east corner. Take him out!”

Sergeant Kaal of the weapons detachment gave a quick confirmation that he had received the order. Seconds later, a rocket tore out the entire wall of the room where the window had been moments ago. The enemy rifle above was silenced.

As they got closer, the intensity of the fire from the attack Kill Pack soldiers drove the few remaining defenders back inside the barracks where a couple grenades soon followed them. More grenades followed and then in burst lead members of the assault team. Seconds later they emerged from the smoldering barracks, leaving no one alive behind them. Second objective completed.

Some enemy came running out a door, at the base of a partially collapsed tower, only to be shot down as they came out into the open. The defenders of the Tooth were off balance from the sudden onslaught, taking huge losses. There were less of the Kill Pack soldiers now, but they had to press the attack while chaos still reigned.

Woor quickly directed the Kill Pack survivors to their next objective: the central keep. A compact, collapsible, titanium ladder was quickly extended by a member of the demolitions team and leaned up against the wall. Two assault team members went first to secure the rooftop. Momentarily, one of the Kill Pack soldiers leaned over the wall to give the all clear. Up came the demolitions team to set the charges, followed by the survivors from the assault groups. The Tooth’s central keep was about to get a new skylight.

Sporadic gunfire was still heard around the ancient fortress of the Tooth, while the Assault teams were gathered on the rooftop of the central keep. The first Kill Pack soldier dropped through the hole in the roof and took a couple steps away from where the next soldier would drop, before taking up a kneeling position in the hallway. More troops quickly dropped through the improvised door in the roof.

As more soldiers got inside the keep, they began fanning out, kicking in doors and securing rooms. They no longer made any pretense of stealth. They were forceful and communicated loudly, growling and snarling to one another. Fighting inside a building could go wrong so very easily if they started to lose track of each other. The first good news was that they enemy hadn’t yet had the opportunity to prepare the inside of the building against an assault. The second good news was that for the most part the third floor of the keep was unoccupied. Still, it wasn’t long before they began encountering fierce resistance inside the main building of the Tooth. The Sons of the Fire and the warriors of Clan Woodan didn’t die easily.

At the stairs, down to the second floor, the Kill Pack soldiers met heavy gunfire from below. It broke off abruptly after some Kill Pack soldiers lobbed a pair of grenades down the staircase. The explosion neutralized or scattered the defenders directly below them. It was always better to fight your way down through a building than up. They threw another pair of grenades down the stairs and cleared away more enemy resolve, before making their way down into the main hall. The first two Kill Pack soldiers were crouched low, when they came down the stairs, firing at anything that moved. The defenders in the hall, fought back from behind over turned tables, but the high velocity bullets went right through them. One Kill Pack soldier took rounds coming down the stairs, the other when he turned the corner at the base of the stairs. Grenades went over the sides of the staircase onto defenders waiting in ambush, silencing their guns in a pair of deafening explosions that echoed loudly through the great hall. The Kill Pack assault teams continued to move down into the hall, pinning down the enemy with punishing suppressing fire.

The last defender was lying behind a pile of ancient armour, rounds clattering loudly off the pieces of steel being used as cover. A grenade lobbed in behind him caught the defender’s attention, but when he turned his head, it exposed him to rifle fire. When the grenade went off behind him, the last enemy in the ancestral feasting hall of Clan Woodan was already dead. The Kill Pack soldiers moved to take up defensive positions around the hall. They paused to put fresh magazines on their weapons, before moving out into the other rooms of the second floor of the keep.

After leaving a target transponder on the rooftop, the demolition team followed the assault groups through the keep. They began the room clearing operation as combat medics, but by the time the main feasting hall was secured they were part of the assault groups, fighting their way through the keep. Outside, the other demolition team was doing their best to rescue the other casualties from the courtyard. The enemy presence outside the keep was almost non-existence thanks to vigilance of the snipers and the heavy weapons detachment. All four towers had been laid low by the mortar or rocket launcher, trapping inside the rubble those who had chosen to fight from within them.

“What about this one?” asked the one demolition team member, addressing his comrade, as they went from body to body.

Master Corporal Guur lay motionless on the ground, barely clinging to life. Most of his neck had been ripped away by a bullet fired from a hunting rifle.

“He’s done,” announced the other member of the demolition team.

As an act of mercy he shot the dying gnoll once in the head, before moving to the next casualty.

Meanwhile, Warrant Woor was leading what was left of his assault group, fighting room to room on the second floor of the central keep of the Tooth. The fighters they faced were all trained soldiers, many of them ex-Kill Pack. Woor recognized one of the bodies of the slain in the main hall. A couple of years ago he’d served with him in battle. It made him angry that someone was stealing the training meant to fight for the Grendels for their own twisted ends. They should have died fighting beside him, not at his own hands.

Moving down the hall, Woor was suddenly aware of a grenade landing among his group, lobbed from around a corner. It had been a delayed throw because by the time a lead soldier moved to kick it back it went off. The Warrant Officer launched himself through the open door of a room they’d cleared seconds earlier. Another soldier just ahead of him wasn’t as lucky. The enemy then raked the hallway with gunfire; neutralizing another two soldiers as they emerged from cover in the wake of the grenade blast. The Warrant Officer was suddenly alone, except for the snarls of a few badly wounded comrades. He could hear the rifles of the other assault group, clearing rooms on the other side of the keep, but they were clearly involved in their own firefight.

Woor prepped a grenade and crouched at the doorway, poised to spring. He cooked the fuse a couple seconds before he made his move. The gnoll banked the grenade off the wall, down the hall, and around the corner, where it exploded. In the wake of the explosion, Woor was up and firing on the run. He caught the stunned defender with three rounds, diagonally across his tall body in the thigh, abdomen, and shoulder. The enemy fell backwards shooting and Woor felt like his ribs were on fire, as impact of the rounds knocked him back against the wall. The ceramic plates of his body armour had taken most of it, but he was certain that at least two of his ribs were broken. The enemy fighter dropped his carbine from his twitching hand and looked up at Woor with a silly grin. The Warrant Officer recognized him immediately. It was Duur. They’d served together for years, been comrades in arms. They’d been young sergeants serving together in the Kill Packs, but Duur had decided to cash in on his training to become a gun for hire.

“Never figured you for a lifer,” managed Duur, trying to hold his guts in with his uninjured arm.

“Never figured you for a traitor,” replied Woor, closing the conversation with a round to the head at close range.

Warrant Officer Woor growled from the pain in his ribs and changed magazines before continuing down what was left of the hallway. He needed to link up with the other assault group and complete the sweep of the keep.

“You are a mighty warrior,” observed a voice from the darkness of a nearby room. “I am Prince Roor of the Clan Woodan. You should know though that whoever sent you on this mission lied to you, warrior. I am fighting for no less than the survival of our culture, the purity of our species. The masters you serve will bring our people to ruins, but it’s still not too late.”

Prince Roor walked out into the hallway, empty-handed.

“We can reclaim the glory of our people,” continued the Clan Prince, gesturing for the Kill Pack soldier to join him. “We can…”

His words were cut off by a burst of gunfire. In his rage, the Warrant Officer emptied the entire magazine into the Prince. He paused for a moment to collect his wits, labouring to breathe, before changing magazines again on his assault rifle. It was almost surreal the way the music was still playing on the sound system inside the keep. Then suddenly the Warrant Officer smiled when he remembered the name of the familiar folk song that was playing over and over again. The Warrant Officer pulled out a short handsaw, strapped to his battle harness, to finish his work. He hummed to the music as he worked, noting a definite drop off in gunfire inside the keep. Satisfied, Woor stuffed his prize into a sack and transmitted the withdraw order to the Kill Pack platoon, using his personal radio. It was time to go. In another ten minutes the Tooth would be swarming with clan soldiers arriving in a foul mood from the nearby mining town of Guuw.

To say that squadron commander, Major Tiir had been a bit put out, when he learned he was being left out of the Munisha campaign, was an understatement. It was made all the worse when they found out they’d been ordered to perform a simple fly by at an air show, while the rest of his air wing were fighting in Munisha. It was a slap in the face for a fighter pilot of his caliber. He and his fellow pilots had trashed their barracks in frustration. When he was being charged for the destruction, Major Tiir offered his resignation from the air force. He’d get a nice job with an airline if his superiors didn’t feel his was up to fighting in the skies over Munisha. The Wing Commander had denied his request for the moment, telling him they’d revisit the issue when he got back. But for now, he was ordered to go to the city of Munition and take part in small air show.

When the four pilots arrived at the airbase, north of Munition, they were even less pleased about their circumstances. Instead of getting to hit the bars and blow off some steam, they and their ground crew were all confined to quarters. Normally that wouldn’t have stopped them, but the vigilant detachment of twelve military police, all armed to the teeth, did the job. Major Tiir and his fellow pilots were at the point where they were considering taking their chances evading their guards to get out of their goram barracks for a much-needed drink.

Then came more news during the night. Now even the goram air show was canceled. When it rained in the Indomitable Borderlands it poured. It was too much for a proud pilot like Major Tiir. Yarooo, the Warleader himself had pinned a medal on his chest. Was someone in his air wing jealous of his career enough to sabotage it? Had he made one too many enemies over the years?

When the new orders finally came, the Major had to restrain himself from killing the messenger, even if he came directly from the office of the Benevolent Dictator. They were ordered to fly a secret mission to neutralize a some research buildings, run by the insurgents in the Koorlon Province. The attack was to be conducted by four combat jets on their own, with minimal support, flying low through the Barrier Mountains. There would be allied special forces on the ground, at the target. To make it a bit more interesting, the mission planners had decided to have the mission at night. The good news was that at least they had a couple days to fine tune their plan and prepare. There was nothing worse than a politically driven air mission dropped on a pilot at the last minute and this was no milk run. The planners had at least given them that much.

Three of the planes involved were Super-Bugbears, one of the best air superiority jets ever designed. The fourth was a Shadow EW, essentially a Super-Bugbear refitted for electronic warfare. They’d need the Shadow to help neutralize the threat of SAM batteries and radar installations on the way to the target, as well as jam enemy communications, if they flew by any enemy spotters. The air strike was timed to coincide with coverage from two satellites, controlled discreetly from Star City. One would support them tactically; the other would jam all communications, except their own.

The jet’s ground crews were given a separate briefing. All they needed to know was that they were arming jets for a classified mission. They needed to know how much fuel and what ordinance to attach to the jets. The jets were loaded with the bare minimum of air-to-air protection. Other than a chance meeting with a stray attack helicopter, the threat of enemy air was almost nil.

During the day before the mission, the pilots ensured they got some forced rest, waking up in plenty of time to be alert for their flight. Major Tiir had a final briefing with the other pilots, while they were in their g-suits. After that they walked to their waiting jets, where the ground crew would go through their final checklists with the pilots. In minutes the jets were thrumming down the runway and streaking into the night sky.

The locals, hearing the jets overhead, weren’t surprised. They’d known about the air show for weeks. They’d be disappointed in the morning, but a bigger air show would be promised to them in two weeks time. They flew leisurely through friendly skies and then when they looped back, the small formation dropped low and turned towards the Barrier Mountains. The one civilian radar station in their path with suspicious loyalties had been shut down for inspection. They were now off the grid. The flight to the target was uneventful. The jamming by the EW Shadow and the satellite were successful. They had made contact with the special forces on the ground and were inbound to their objective at the prearranged time.

“Air Show, this is Wolf Pack Minor,” came the voice into Major Tiir’s earpiece. “You’re clear for stunt, out.”

“Roger, Wolf Pack Minor,” replied the Major. “Air Show two and three, stunt one now.”

The jets banked towards the Tooth and began their strikes. Missiles keyed in on the transponders left by the Kill Pack soldiers. The stone façade of the biological weapons lab was shattered and the contents of the building washed with napalm. Ordinance targeted the central keep of the Tooth and tore it apart. In seconds the ancient fortress of Clan Woodan was reduced to rubble.

For the army of Clan Woodan in the streets of Juulan, the hope of the restoration of the old ways of their people was quickly replaced by the sense of impending doom. The news of the attack on the Tooth came just before skirmishing elements of the approaching divisions of the Grendel Army made contact. Some were angered at the death of Prince Roor, but many lost heart. The Woodan Clan Prince was an inspirational leader, with deep pockets, and strong backers. Without him many felt the insurrection would falter. They were right.

What they didn’t know was that the real reason they would fail was the destruction of Prince Roor’s biological warfare lab. The lab had been destroyed before it had time to export death simultaneously to all human populations in contact with the Grendels. Isla Vista, the human colony purchased from Santa Barbara; Alien City, the human immigrant enclave in the Indomitable Borderlands; the Tyryte railway camps; the ports; and at border crossing points with neighbouring nations of New Felix and Solid Water. In the chaos after the backlash against the attacks against humanity, the Clan Prince had thought to nudge isolationist elements in the Indomitable Borderlands towards rebellion. Without the biological genocide, there had been no general uprising outside of the lands once held by Clan Woodan, during the Clan Wars. He had failed.

Now in Juulan, they were preparing to reap the harvest of the Clan Prince’s failure. Some gnolls deserted, feeling there was nothing left to fight for and that that the battle was hopeless. The 11th Mountain Division, under Brigadier General Ruukwa, decided to stay and fight and die. They were professional warriors to the core and understood that this would be their last battle. Besides, where could they go? Before joining the rebellion, the 11th Mountain Division was a Grendel army unit, largely recruited from the lands populated by Clan Woodan. They were anything but anonymous partisans. It was better to die on the field of battle with your brothers than slink off into the night, to be hunted alone as a fugitive. The private army of Clan Woodan was of two different minds. News of the destruction of the Tooth and the death of Prince Roor sent shock waves through their ranks. The mercenaries and light hearted deserted, while the true believers, as well as those too shocked to do otherwise, stayed and fought. Some Clan Woodan warriors just numbly returned to their homes, seeing the cause of their struggle now without a viable leader.

The creeping death of the Grendel Army came ever closer, supported by flocks of attack helicopters and the occasional air strike. Brigadier General Ruukwa, a popular figure among the warriors of his division, chose to fight in the front ranks of the division. Some would say he was inspiring his troops. Others would say he knew he was going to die and just wanted to get it over with. Others still would say that he just wanted to die with honour, instead of being dragged from some smoky bunker, to be put on display as a traitor by the Corporate Ministry.

A few hours after the news of the death of Prince Roor reached Juulan; there was scarcely a minute where no one heard the sound of gunfire or explosions. As larger enemy groups made contact with the rebels in Juulan, the battle intensified and the casualties began soaring. The rebels of Clan Woodan swore that they would not give their enemies an easy victory. No quarter was asked or given. The mountain streams would flow with blood.

The news from Juulan swept across the Indomitable Borderlands like a wild fire. Reporters from the news channels were risking their hides in the provincial capital, in hopes of getting the big story first hand. In the besieged city, reporters dodged the same indiscriminate artillery shells meant for the enemies of the Corporate Ministry. Across the Grendels, radios and televisions were turned on at the work place. A nation collectively held its breath and wondered, what did it mean? But before the insurgents of the Woodan Clan managed to turn their rebellion into a popular uprising it was over. Grendel Kill Packs had killed Prince Roor in a raid against the Tooth, even before the final battle for Juulan was underway. It was a severe blow to his cause and the hearts of the clan warriors were heavy. The fire was gone from their spirits, but the rage lived on.

Jaamhar was like a lot of Grendels, sitting in his favourite bar, glued to the television screen. The shift foreman rolled his empty bottle of Bitter Harvest Laager around in his huge paws, while the scenes of rebellion playing out in front of him transfixed his gaze.

“Get you another one, Jaamhar?” offered Kaar, the chief bartender at the Hark to Bounty pub.

“Thanks,” nodded the shift foreman at the local cannery, his eyes never leaving the screen.

The crabbing season was done with and Uber Fish Canneries was frantically retooling for the fishing boats expected by the end of the week. For most of the shift workers at the cannery in the rocky, coastal city of Piik, it meant enjoying a couple of much needed days off.

The volume was turned up and all eyes were on a reporter, crouched in a dusty, makeshift bunker.

“This is Hiir reporting live for BNN from Juulan,” stated the reporter, loudly, as a nearby artillery hit caused more chips of the bunker roof to come loose and fall around him. “A few hours ago, I was walking to the streets and interviewing fighters from Clan Woodan about the loss of their clan prince. Now, it’s no longer safe to operate out in the open. The Grendel army is now close enough to shell positions inside the city. The 11th Mountain Division is putting up a stubborn fight in this rebellion, but they’re hopelessly outnumbered and outgunned. Half an hour ago, a mortar round killed an embedded reporter from BNN, while they were at a forward observation post with the rebels. The shelling is getting fiercer by the moment.”

“Get some!” shouted Jaamhar, raising his beer in a drunken salute to the falling shells.

No one in the pub had to ask which side he was cheering for and others joined in. Other gnolls, taking in the boisterous afternoon at the Hark to Bounty, began singing battle chants. Many wished that they could be with their brothers fighting in the mountains of the Koorlon Province. There was no love for the rebel mountain clan out here on the wave swept, east coast of the Indomitable Borderlands.

The reporter on television paused for a moment, his ears perking up.

“Wait, I can hear the helicopters now. They’re coming this way. You can hear the rocket fire. It’s intense! Wait they’re, oh goram hell!”

The feed suddenly went dead. BNN quickly switched to another embedded reporter, amidst the rebels in Juulan, who lasted a bit longer under the all out assault by the Grendel Expeditionary Forces.

“Those Tyen-sah rebels are finished,” proclaimed Jaamhar, raising his beer in victory.

“Looks like you’ll have to go back to work after all,” grinned Kaar, filling up a pitcher from a keg.

“That’s it,” groaned Jaamhar. “Way to ruin my moment of triumph.”

“Not to worry, Jaamhar,” smiled Kaar, slyly. “A few more beer and you’ll believe you led the charge into Juulan yourself.”

Admiral Yukuuv was in the officer’s mess, when he got his new orders. After he finished reading them, he felt a sudden jolt go through his nervous system, as if he just learned his ship was about to be hit by torpedoes.

“You are to return immediately to Hackleburg for a personal debriefing with Yarooo,” said the Admiral, quietly reading the orders aloud.

The Admiral rose from the table and excused himself to his fellow officers, before leaving for his quarters to pack.

“Sir, your belongings will be sent on after you, sir,” said the provost, who had orders to escort the Admiral directly back to the Grendels homeland.

“You won’t mind if I get changed into a clean uniform will you?” growled Yukuuv, not liking to be addressed this way by a member of the military police.

“Your will, my Admiral,” bowed the provost.

Yukuuv changed into his dress uniform and then took the time to fill a briefcase with his laptop and some personal files. When he emerged from his quarters, the provost noted his briefcase but wisely didn’t comment on it.

They went to the helipad on the cruiser, where a Sea Eagle helicopter was waiting for them. Once the pilot went through their checklist and got the all clear from the flight officer to lift off, the helicopter made its way to the nearest aircraft carrier, two miles away.

While Yukuuv maintained a professionally stern exterior, he couldn’t help but be a bit troubled. The morning after Prince Roor was dead and the rebellion all but ended, he was being summoned before Yarooo. Somewhere, some random scribbling by someone sympathetic to the rebellion had mentioned his service with him. Likely, he was going to have to defend himself on ground of treason. Hadn’t his service been enough? In the last few years he’d been the Admiral chosen to lead almost every mission, to every hot spot in Wysteria, as the manifestation of Grendel gunboat diplomacy. True, a lot of the time he’d just been the right gnoll in the right place, but he had to believe that that counted for something. It had been years since he’d even been home, hardly giving him opportunity to plot the downfall of the Corporate Ministry. Nothing could be taken for granted in uncertain times though and emerging from a rebellion certainly counted as uncertain times.

His jet took off from the carrier and made its way to Koffee, where he boarded the supersonic jet that was waiting to ferry him back to the Indomitable Borderlands. At least he wouldn’t have to wait long to get some answers, mused the Admiral.

The War Minister was known for his robust energy, but this morning he felt uninspired and hollow inside. He’d tried to eat breakfast, but the food tasted like ash. For the first time in his life he had no appetite for it.

He went to his office and nothing felt right. The reports from Juulan and war zones elsewhere in Wysteria no longer had any meaning to him. For a moment, the chill of apprehension overtook him, but he quickly shook it off. He was Fang. He was the owner of Borderland Industrial. He was the War Minister. He was the number two gnoll in the Indomitable Borderlands. So why did it feel like the walls of his office were closing in on him?

The civil war in the Koorlon Province had aggravated him more than any foreign war could. As the fighting escalated he found himself identifying more with the rebels and less with the Corporate Ministry that he had worked with Yarooo to found. That the fighting had now ended didn’t leave him any less conflicted.

While he hadn’t completely thrown his lot in with Prince Roor, he had rendered him aid. He’d passed on intelligence to the rebels, giving them the time they needed for their planned genocide against the humans. For a long time, Fang had wanted the Corporate Ministry to take a step back from the humans. Prince Roor’s final solution seemed like the answer to his dilemma that he was looking for. Worse case scenario, they could have even blamed the biological weapons attack on ZaKommian terrorists. ZaKommian insanity had at least that much usefulness.

What bothered him most wasn’t that he’d heard about the death of Prince Roor at the Tooth. It was how he’d heard about the attack. The raid against the Tooth had been a complete mystery to him until he heard the news reports, just like anyone else. It meant that Yarooo had to have known about his meeting with Prince Roor. The Benevolent Dictator for Life must have discovered that he was passing intelligence on to the rebels and cut him out of the mission against the Tooth. He’d been so very careful, but obviously not discreet enough in his dealings with Prince Roor. It felt strange that after all his clandestine activities in Nephia, Falconspear, and elsewhere that it was here at home where he had slipped up. It was because his feelings were not invested in those foreign places, those places that could all burn for all he cared. They were not the Indomitable Borderlands and meant little to him. But when the warriors of his own land vied for supremacy it had torn him apart inside. The Corporate Ministry had been founded to prevent a return to the Clan Wars and end the unstable rule of the Corporate Council.

He remembered the first time he’d met Yarooo. It seemed like a million years ago, another life from the one he lived now. Fang was just another Bugbear pilot in the USSR-North Alerican War. Air wings of combat jets flew at each other with abandon, each side confident in the ability of their pilots to fight through the enemy. The night sky lit up like a fireworks display for some macabre festival. Jets caught fire everywhere, amidst the spectacle of streaking missiles, flares, and gunfire. He’d shot down three enemies before, as his report sarcastically admitted, he’d misplaced one of his jet’s wings. Fang ejected over enemy held ground, which usually meant the end of the war if not your life. He’d stayed conscious, when the force of the wind struck him upon ejection. The pilot had landed uninjured and quickly hid his parachute, before distancing himself from the place he landed. Fang was on the run, with enemy patrols on the look out for him. His chances to evade capture were slim, but Fang was not eager to be killed or captured. He was young, strong, and unhurt.

The Indomitable Borderlands already had Kill Packs operating behind the lines of the North Alerican forces. Most were involved in hit and run attacks against the enemy’s logistics lines, but others were directed against high value targets, either for recon or to conduct raids. Yarooo was leading a Kill Pack group that was diverted from a recon mission to rescue a downed pilot. The Kill Pack had the difficult task of evading the enemy and at the same time locating Fang. Fang’s transponder sent out occasional signals at designated times, but the pilot was certain that the enemy would eventually be able use the data to find him before his own side did. Yarooo had found him hiding in an improvised shelter, concealed with brush. He might have been glad for the company except that he knew he was still a long way from home. The future Warleader was a professional in the bush. He’d led his Kill Pack, with the pilot in tow, through enemy territory and into no one’s land, before the group finally made their way back to their own lines. Fang had been alone behind enemy lines for two days and then spent another four days with Yarooo, quietly making their way back without any enemy contact. The two gnolls had been mostly focused on the mission at hand, but they’d gotten along just fine. Fang got back into a Bugbear and Yarooo was soon back out in the field. And that should have been all there was to the story, but it wasn’t.

After the war, the two met again at a Corporate Council feast. Yarooo was a rising star in the Grendel Motor Company and Fang was being groomed to take over the family business empire, most notably Borderland Industrial. It was for the most part a happy reunion for the two warriors, but neither of them was completely happy with the chaotic leadership they’d come home to. Assassinations were so frequent in the Corporate Council that being the gnoll in charge was more likely than not a death sentence. Both of them had other gnolls trying to kill them for their positions in the canine corporate. Afterwards, Fang and Yarooo had gone on a relaxing dire bear hunt together. While casually talking about business, Yarooo had confided in him.

“If we were in charge, things would be very different, my friend,” had suggested the future Warleader.

For a lot of gnolls, that would have been the end of it, but not for gnolls like them. Once the idea was out there it gained a life all its own, with Yarooo and Fang grabbing onto it for as long as they could ride it. They schemed, they made plans, and they built up their forces and resource base. When the time for rebellion came, most gnolls were happy to see an end to the Corporate Council. This was no people’s rebellion in the mountain forests. At Yarooo’s orders, the Grendel Army had swiftly seized the capital itself. Enemies of the new order had already been identified and were quickly sought out. Their enemies never had time to regroup and recover from the initial onslaught. Overnight, the Corporate Ministry began its rule under Yarooo, with Fang ever at his side. The two gnolls were living legends of the modern corporate era. Fate had dealt them a strong hand and they’d played it for all it was worth. So how had he gotten here?

Fang could hear the footsteps approaching from down the hall. Up till now it had been very quiet outside his office. The door opened. No secret police; not the soldiers; just Yarooo. Alone.

“I’ll never understand why you did it, old friend,” stated Yarooo. “But some things can’t be taken back.”

The Warleader took out a large handgun and regarded it for a moment. It was a Model 6, Dire Bear Tooth, .76 caliber pistol, courtesy of Wolf Pack Munitions. It was one of the most powerful handguns ever created and Yarooo was holding it, with visible regret. Fang had become a faithful hound who needed to be put down, no longer able to keep up on the hunt. Fang could feel his time coming to an end. Yarooo paused for a moment, his gaze drawn down the length of the ten-inch gun barrel, reading the gold engraving.

Blood Brother

“It’s been an honour to have known you, old friend,” Yarooo finally said, before setting the loaded gun gently down on the desk beside Fang. The War Minister looked up one last time before his eyes took in the gun again.

The Benevolent Dictator for Life turned and left the room. Yarooo was half way down the hallway when he heard the gunshot shatter the silence of the moment.

For all the good it did him, the old gnoll stood guard at the door of his charge. Having the gnoll that you’re guarding in the belly of her enemy’s fortress was poor tactics, but fate wasn’t concerned about the position it put you in. That was your problem. Even if his duty had become little more than symbolic, it was a symbol worth giving his life for. It remained his only reason for existence in these troubled times. For all the good it did him.

Urooq’s ears perked up suddenly. He could hear the footsteps approaching from down the hall. Three, no four gnolls were coming his way. Urooq was unarmed, save for a ceremonial dagger. His hosts had at least permitted him that much. It was just enough to preserve his honour. He was an old warrior, but his strength had not yet left him and his training was formidable. Many young pups had tested his abilities and paid with their blood. For all the good it did him now.

The four gnolls approached the door where he stood. Urooq had recognized Yarooo by his scent long before he saw him. He didn’t know the three bodyguards that accompanied him, but he could guess that they weren’t chosen for their fur.

“I’m here to speak to the Clan Mother,” stated Yarooo, the Benevolent Dictator for Life.

Urooq hesitated for a moment and his hand instinctively started to move towards his blade hilt.

“You are a formidable warrior,” growled Yarooo, signaling his security not to attack the defiant old gnoll. “But remember that she lives only at my whim. This is not a day to test the limits of my mercy.”

Urooq bowed his head and stepped back from the door he was guarding. One of the three bodyguards accompanying Yarooo looked disappointed to be denied his kill, while the other two feigned disinterest. The old warrior cooled the fire in his heart, for the sake of his charge. The Clan Mother must survive this day. He must not forget where he was, deep inside a security fortress operated by the Borderland Intelligence Bureau.

“Your will, Warleader,” managed Urooq.

Yarooo opened the door and entered the room alone. His security detachment waited patiently, quietly keeping Urooq company during the tense meeting that followed, inside the room.

As prisons went, the accommodations of the Clan Mother were lavish. Many of the comforts of home, as befits the matriarch of a clan were evident, except of course the freedom to leave or communicate with the outside world. Care had been taken though, to ensure that the Clan Mother’s stay was not an unpleasant one. Intricate rugs, imported from Kamadhatu, covered the floor. Tapestries hung from the wall, depicting an era long passed that some still desperately clung to. A large couch, similar to the one she had at the Tooth, dominated the room. In front of it was a table made from marble. Against one wall was a bookshelf that was stocked with enough literature to keep an active mind entertained during her visit.

“The rebellion is over, Miiri,” stated Yarooo, after closing the door behind him. “It is time to settle accounts.”

“Have I not helped you avoid the genocide that my own son planned for the humans?” replied the Clan Mother, sharply. She placed the hardbound copy of Vultaar’s Follies, that she was reading, down on the marble table.

“Had you not betrayed your prince, I would have exterminated Clan Woodan to the last pup and given your empty lands to the gnolls of Clan Yaator,” growled the Dictator for Life.

“All I have done, I have done to safeguard my Clan,” stated the Clan Mother, defiantly.

“I think that had your son made less mistakes in his rebellion, you would not have found it necessary to betray his plans for genocide against the humans,” noted Yarooo.

“I’ve sacrificed my only son for the future of my clan and the future of the Grendels. Enough of the blood of the Woodan Clan has already been spilled in the rivers of our mountain homes,” glowered the Clan Mother. “I did my duty, as was required of me. I did not betray my son. He betrayed my clan first, offering us it up as a sacrifice to his ambition.”

“I will be the final judge of how many more sacrifices are required of your Clan, Miiri,” said Yarooo, sternly.

“What more would you have me do?” demanded the Clan Mother, her paws on her hips.

“The private army of Clan Woodan will immediately disband. I do not believe that many of them are now left alive, but it will stay that way,” began Yarooo. “You will also surrender control of the Glow in the Dark mining corporation.”

“Outrageous!” growled the Clan Mother. “That company has been in my family for generations.”

“Do not confuse this with a negotiation, old woman. You and your clan live only at my whim,” Yarooo growled back, towering of the female gnoll. “Gnolls everywhere are crying for the blood of your clan. Remember that I am not completely adverse to indulging revenge on a grand scale.”

“The company requires the guidance of our people,” protested the Clan Mother. “Our expertise in mining has made the Grendels the super power it is today. To remove my people from corporate and industrial operations will only hurt the Indomitable Borderlands.”

“The Glow in the Dark Mining Corporation will be merged with the Utopia Mine Company,” dictated the Warleader. “The new company will be called Borderland Energy and Mining Incorporated. I will retain executives from your clan on the basis of merit alone. Your family will retain a 10% share under one condition.”

“Which is?”

“You will help me clean up the mess your son made in the Koorlon Province,” replied Yarooo. “You will be my strongest supporter. You will speak publicly about the necessity of my actions in the rebellion and any polices I deem necessary from this time on. You will calm the fire in your people’s bellies. You will speak out about the necessity of law and order, when I begin arresting those behind your failed insurrection.”

“And if I refuse to be a mouth piece for the Corporate Ministry?”

“Then I will indulge the blood lust of the Grendels who want to see your Clan wiped from the face of Wysteria. People will learn of your son’s attempted genocide and there won’t be anywhere you or your people can hide from me or them,” replied Yarooo, sternly.

“You have as much to lose from that information becoming public as I do!”

“You forget Miiri. In the tale of attempted genocide against the humans, I am the hero. You and your clan are the villains. There would be some ripples that needed smoothing out, but I’m quite confident that wiping your clan out to the last pup would be enough to appease anyone. If you truly serve the well being of your clan, there is only one acceptable answer.”

The Clan Mother paused to consider the words of the Warleader of the Indomitable Borderlands. Her attempts to lay all the blame for the rebellion on her son had clearly failed. Yarooo was right. There was only one answer she could give to ensure the survival of her clan.

“Your will, Warleader,” bowed the Clan Mother.

It had been years since Admiral Yukuuv had last been in Hackleburg. As the Admiral of the Drakkar Fleet, he’d seen action in almost every potential hotspot that the Grendels had fought in. Since being personally sent by Yarooo to lead the Grendel navy against Nephia, the closest he’d been to the Indomitable Borderlands was a naval base in Koffee, where the Drakkar Fleet was based. Sailing from war zone to war zone, he’d hardly had the time to notice the years go by till now. Being an admiral of a huge fleet had become so second nature to Yukuuv that he resented anyone removing him from his habitat, the bridge of his flagship. And so much had changed in the city since he’d last been here.

But here he was, back in the capital of the Indomitable Borderlands, the seat of the Corporate Ministry. Instead of feeling the embrace of his homeland, the Admiral was filled with dread. Commanding the fleet off Munisha, he’d been isolated from the events of the insurrection back home. He’d heard about purges against the Woodan Clan leadership and their supporters, after their rebellion was crushed. Being recalled to Hackleburg, accompanied by a bodyguard who might as well have had him under guard, was less than reassuring. Had someone dropped his name to vouch for him and brought him under scrutiny? Had the powers that be gone paranoid and decided him a threat? Dictators were always dangerous that way.

Admiral Yukuuv was escorted into Yarooo’s prime administrative building and up the elevator to the offices of the Corporate Ministry.

“The Warleader is ready to see you now, my Admiral,” announced his armed escort, opening the door to Yarooo’s office for him.

“Thank you,” nodded Yukuuv, insincerely, as he entered the room unescorted.

Inside, Yarooo looked up from behind his desk, gesturing him to take a seat across from him.

“Yukuuv, it’s good to see you again,” smiled the Dictator for Life. “Have some tea.”

“Thank you, my Warleader,” acknowledged the Admiral, taking a seat. “I haven’t been home for years.”

“Then your return is long overdue,” said Yarooo, warming his paws on the large stone mug he held.

“For a world founded on the principles of peace, there are many wars in Wysteria,” observed the Admiral, staring at his tea with suspicion. The scent was unfamiliar. “No sooner is one mission completed, than the fleet deployed to make a stand somewhere else.”

“These are interesting times,” mused Yarooo, setting his mug down on the desk. “From the looks of things we’ll be returning to Nephia in force before the year is out.”

“That doesn’t make me feel better about the last mission there,” stated Yukuuv, sniffing at his tea, trying to figure out what was in it.

“It’s called Dharma Delight,” said Yarooo, noting the other gnoll’s uncertainty about his tea. “It’s a spicy tea from Kamadhatu. I’ve grown quite fond of it.”

The Admiral nodded and took a sip. He didn’t want to be rude. If the Warleader wanted him dead, refusing to drink some tea wasn’t going to change that.

“An interesting flavour,” replied Yukuuv, setting the tea mug down again.

“What’s your take on the current crisis in Nephia?”

“That I need to be brought up to speed before I can properly advise my Warleader.”

“A fair request,” smiled Yarooo, pulling a disc out of his desk drawer and handing it the Admiral. “This should get you up to speed. Feel free to call on any resources you need to gather more intelligence. You have a lot of work ahead of you, but at least you do not have to start from scratch.”

“My Warleader?”

“I suppose congratulations are in order, War Minister,” smiled Yarooo, trying not to grimace when he addressed someone other than Fang by that title.

“Fang?”

“He’d dead,” stated Yarooo, dryly. “We’ve been keeping it quiet, but very soon we’ll be releasing a statement. I just wanted to get my pieces in place first: like you for instance. You’re going to need a stake to sit at the table of the Corporate Ministry. I’ve already started the paperwork to make you the majority owner of the Stealth Steel Foundry. I’ll maintain a healthy minority share, but I feel your experience as a successful naval officer will be good for bottom line of the company.”

“Thank you, my Warleader,” bowed Yukuuv.

“No need,” smiled Yarooo. “After a few weeks as the new War Minister, you’re going to think that Wysterian naval tour of yours was a holiday cruise. You need the corporate portfolio, because I need my War Minister to have teeth in the domestic market and not be easily influenced by the wealthy. Besides, I recently acquired the biggest mining company in the Indomitable Borderlands. I’m hardly without means.”

It was a sunny day in the Indomitable Borderlands. For the citizens of the Grendels, it was also a national day of mourning to honour the passing of one of its top corporate predators. News crews packed in where they could, in downtown Hackleburg, to cover the event. Years ago, during the reign of the Corporate Council, deaths among high-ranking members of the government were so frequent you could set your clock by it. The Corporate Ministry hadn’t seen the death of anyone this highly ranked and probably wouldn’t again, until it too was toppled.

“This is Fiir reporting live for BNN from Hackleburg. The hearse carrying the body of Fang, the late Minister of War, is slowly driving down the road to the Indomitable Borderland’s prime administrative buildings,” stated the reporter, with an appropriate air of reverence. “Passing by now on parade are the surviving members of his old squadron in the Grendel Air Force. Fang was an ace during the USSR-North Alerican War. It was there, after being shot down, that he first met our glorious Warleader and Benevolent Dictator for Life.”

The network plugged in a carefully prepared segment, highlighting Fang’s military career as a pilot and an officer. The feed then returned to the spectacle in Hackleburg.

“Like many of you, I’m still in a state of shock, after hearing about Fang’s crash in a military prototype that Borderland Industrial was developing. Our Minister of War was known to be very hands on in the aerospace industry and continued to log hours in the cockpit, long after retiring from the air force. Officials from Borderland Industrial have stated that to honour their fallen chief, they’ll be naming the finished design after him.”

The network plugged into a brief segment that highlighted Fang’s corporate career as the owner of Borderland Industrial, the undisputed leader of Wysteria’s aerospace industry. The segment carefully avoided being a blatant commercial ad, but wasn’t shy about showing off its dominance in the industry, before the feed returned for live coverage in Hackleburg.

“The procession has stopped in front of the palatial government buildings and the back of the hearse is opening up. The coffin is being taken out of the car and carried to its final resting place by executives from Borderland Industrial. The tomb for Fang was prepared this week, during which time his body was with his family. Yarooo is there by the graveside, with the other ministers and their families. The body is being lowered into the tomb and the pall bearers are marching away to take their places with the others in the corporate seats. Yarooo is now stepping forward, to the podium, sited beside the tomb of his long time friend and colleague, preparing to make his address to the nation.”

Yarooo stood behind the heavy podium, carved from a single block of marble. Years ago, he’d used it to made his first public address after his coup de tat had successfully overthrown the unstable Corporate Council. Today, it was to be used to make the funerary speech to the close friend who had made that revolt successful and helped transform the Indomitable Borderlands into the modern superpower it was today.

“Most of those who will speak after me will commend Fang, the minister, my friend, who helped bring meaning to the new Corporate Ministry. It will seem to them a worthy thing that such an honour should be given at their own burial. But I should have preferred that, when a gnoll's deeds have been this great, they should be honoured in deed only, and with such an honour as this public funeral, which you are now witnessing. The friend of the dead who knows the facts is likely to think that the words of the speaker fall short of his knowledge and of his wishes; another who is not so well informed, when he hears of anything which surpasses his own powers, will be envious and will suspect exaggeration. However, since our ancestors have set the seal of their approval upon the practice, I must obey, and to the utmost of my power shall endeavor to satisfy the wishes and beliefs of all who hear me to honour my fallen friend.

I will speak first of our ancestors, for it is right and seemly that now, when we are lamenting one who honoured them with his life, a tribute should be paid to their memory. There has never been a time when they did not inhabit this land, which by their valour they have handed down from generation to generation, and we have received from them a mighty state. But if they were worthy of praise, still more were our fathers, who added to their inheritance, and after many a struggle transmitted to us their sons this great empire. And we ourselves assembled here today, who are still most of us in the vigor of life, have carried the work of improvement further, and have richly endowed the Indomitable Borderlands with all things, so that she is sufficient for herself both in peace and in war. Of the military exploits, or of the energy with which we or our fathers drove back the tide of our enemies, I will not speak; for the tale would be long and it is already familiar to you.

Our Corporate Ministry that Fang worked to establish does not copy our neighbors', but is an example to them. And we have not forgotten to provide for our weary spirits many relaxations from toil. We have regular games and sacrifices throughout the year; our homes are beautiful and elegant; and the delight of these things helps to banish any sorrow we might suffer. Because of the greatness of our state the fruits of the whole world flow in upon us, so that we enjoy the best goods of other countries as freely as our own.

And we shall assuredly not be without witnesses. There are mighty monuments of our power which will make us the wonder of this and of succeeding ages; we shall not need the praises of the media or of any other whose poetry may please for the moment, although his representation of the facts will not bear the light of day. For we have compelled every land and every sea to open a path for our valour, and have everywhere planted eternal memorials of our friendship and of our wrath. Such is the state for whose sake our people nobly fought and died; they could not bear the thought that she might be taken from them; and every one of us who survive should gladly toil on her behalf.

I have dwelt upon the greatness of the Grendels because I want to show you that we are contending for a higher prize than those who enjoy none of these privileges, and to establish by manifest proof the merit of Fang whom I am now commemorating. The loftiest praise has been already spoken. For in magnifying the Indomitable Borderlands I have magnified him, and Grendels like him whose virtues made this nation glorious.

The value of such a spirit as Fang is not to be expressed in words. But instead of listening to such praise I would have you day by day fix your eyes upon the greatness of the Grendels, until you become filled with the love of your nation; and when you are impressed by the spectacle of her glory, reflect that this empire has been acquired by gnolls who knew their duty and had the courage to do it, who in the hour of conflict had the fear of dishonor always present to them, and who, if ever they failed in an enterprise, would not allow their virtues to be lost to their country, but would freely give their lives to her as the fairest offering which they could present at her feast. Make gnolls like Fang your examples, and, esteeming courage to be freedom and freedom to be happiness, do not weigh too nicely the perils of this life.

Wherefore I do not now pity the family of the dead who stand here; I would rather admire the accomplishments of their fallen son. You know that gnolls like Fang may be deemed fortunate who have gained their utmost honor, whether an honorable death like theirs, or an honorable sorrow like yours, and whose share of happiness has been so ordered that the term of their happiness is likewise the term of their life. I know how hard it is to make you feel this, when the good fortune of others will too often remind you of the gladness that once lightened your hearts. To those of you who have passed their prime, I say: congratulate yourselves that you have been victorious during the greater part of your days; remember that your life of sorrow will not last long, and be comforted by the glory of those who are gone. For the love of honour alone is ever young, and not riches, as some say, but honour is the delight of Grendels when they are old and useless.

I have paid the required tribute, in obedience to the law, making use of such fitting words as I had. And now, when you have duly lamented, every one on the death of Fang, you may depart.”

{Borrowed liberally from Pericles’ funeral oration from Thucydides}

The tide was coming in, in the small coastal town of Tuurkod, located near the southern tip of Blood Island. Tuurkod itself wasn’t sheltered enough to be used as a commercial harbour, but a small community had built up there over the years. Recreation boats were moored offshore or tied up to small docks. Tuurkod hadn’t been a place of great commerce for a hundred years. A logging company had set up mills here to process logs from up the coast, but the company had since found a better place for their operations and moved on.

Woor sat at the end of the small private dock, his back to a small rowboat. The tiny boat was deposited upside down and lashed on top of the dock to increase its chances of survival in a storm. The fishing wasn’t bad off the dock, if you liked rockfish, but today he was just taking the time to watch the sunset. It would still be months before the summer sunsets would be a thing of awe, but Woor wasn’t feeling picky tonight. He was just as glad to be as far as he could from the mountain battlefields of the Koorlon Province.

The seaside home was the property of Varwuul, the lead sniper on the mission against the Tooth. The small home on the scenic coast had been an award for his 500th sniper kill, something he didn’t mention, but something many knew about. He’d seen how the mission at the Tooth had affected Woor and suggested he use the place to get his head on straight. Woor had taken him up on the offer immediately. The Warrant Officer’s leave was quickly approved and it couldn’t have come soon enough for his liking.

And now Woor was on leave, after the successful completion of his secret mission against the Tooth. What his superiors had termed a success, he felt was just short of nearly being a disaster. Certainly the mission goals were all accomplished; Woor had even personally presented the severed head of Prince Roor to Yarooo. But Woor’s own goals were sadly neglected. He’d been denied the numbers and time necessary to reduce his casualties. To Woor, just one casualty was too many. It pointed to a failure in planning, logistics, or execution by someone, somewhere down the line.

He’d been told that to redirect greater numbers for the mission would have jeopardized any chance for success at all. Apparently, a high level official would have alerted the rebels of their plans had they noticed any more troops diverted from the forces sent against Juulan; from their overseas mission in Munisha; or garrisoned elsewhere. Woor would have happily pulled the trigger on the high-ranking traitor himself if it meant being able to bring more troops and lower casualties. He’d told his commander as much during his briefing.

The soldiers of the assault groups that died in the Tooth were gnolls he’d trained himself, some he’d worked with for years. Friends left unburied but not forgotten on the trail of blood. The betrayal from many of the defenders, ex-Kill Pack soldiers he’d personally trained and known for years, had stung the most. The Kill Packs were a close warrior brotherhood. Sometimes matters of honour needed to be resolved, but betrayal of the brotherhood hadn’t seemed possible, till the raid on the Tooth.

After the Tooth, Woor had considered resigning from the special forces and cashing in his training in the private sector. Kill Pack soldiers did it all the time and that last mission had left a bad taste in his mouth. Still, the way Duur had mocked him as a lifer, before he killed the traitor, had given him cause to reconsider. He just needed some time to think things through. Being a Warrant Officer in the Kill Packs was a position of prestige among warriors. Besides, there were better things to fight for than the almighty golden bond.

From atop the steps that led down to the small dock, a voice shattered his calm.

“Are you coming in tonight or are you waiting to howl at the Moon,” laughed his wife.

“Just taking in the sunset,” barked Woor.

His wife came down the steps and out onto the dock, sitting beside him. They watched the sunset. Later, they howled at the moon and laughed.