Pig dropped the dead six legged deer on the mossy floor, next to the campfire, and whipped out his pocket knife, not wanting to blunt his combat blade.
Ripper scoffed from his spot, next to the fire and tossed him the Tomahawk, throwing it upside down. "Think fast."
Pig caught the thing just in time to avoid getting brained by it. He folded his knife and dropped it in his pocket, then got to gutting the dead animal with the chain-axe.
On the other side of the campfire, Father was typing a report on a Tau/Eldar hybrid portable cogitator he seemed almost afraid of. The thing weighted ten times less than any Imperial equivalent yet processed information a thousand times faster and had a wrist mounted holographic screen and keyboard. The lack of feedback from the keys was driving him mad, along with the fact he had to keep one had in front of his face and type with the other all the time, making the process of typing a report almost painful.
And this one was quite long. They had been dropped on this rebellious world two days prior with instructions to secure outdated tank and aircraft manufactures so they could be put out of commission by the Adeptus Mechanicus, preventing the rebels from getting their hands on armor and air support, thus keeping the situation from escalating. Then, they had located and abducted key militia leaders and sent them to the Tier 3-manned HQ in the planet's capital, learning about a dozen rebel strongholds in the area. They had been to two of those, performed recon, marked out priority targets for airstrikes and watched as Tier 3s stormed the positions.
A busy week and it was far from over, but this operation, taking place on a planet with a population in the tens of billions, all very angry at the Imperium, would have cost about a hundred million lives at this point, had it been handled by regular Guardsmen. Instead, surgical strikes and a solid intelligence network had kept the body count under the million, not all of them militias, but collateral damage was always unavoidable.
Twenty Tier 2 operators had been killed during the operation. Tier 3s were not fairing as good, with a three hundred casualty count, but the timid flow of volunteers from all over the Imperium kept the Reapers ranks growing and constant combat situations offered many opportunities for Tier 3s to be promoted to a higher Tier. The system was working flawlessly.
Pig pushed a large stick trough the flayed and eviscerated animal and hung it over the fire on two Y shaped branches, stabbed in the dirt next to the fire.
Priest climbed down from his perch, atop a tall pine tree, and observed the slowly cooking lump of meet as Pig began cutting it in places, rotating the branch and the whole animal lazily.
"Better than MREs." The old man finally spoke, earning an energetic nod from Ripper. He slung the boxy sniper Hedgehog in his back and sat by the fire. Rip had started the thing, the kind knew exactly how to make a fire burn hot without smoke, a skill that was very hard to teach. Priest knew how as well, but he had been busy planting traps around the camp and spotting any nearby threat.
He had seen nothing out of the ordinary, yet his instincts kept screaming at him to be on the lookout.
The former Vindicare had always trusted his instinct, no matter the circumstances, yet there was little he could do now, besides keep on using his sensors to spot potential threats.
He tapped the side of his helmet and watched as the sonar, radar, HBS and thermal sensors all reported negative.
He asked the others to check out the area, in case it was a system malfunction, but they all confirmed that there was nothing, calming the sniper somewhat.
In a nearby group of ferns, two shapes exchanged relieved hand signals, their three blue eyes analyzing every detail with care as they backed away without a sound. They would be kilometers away by sun rise.
Team Zombie began eating soon after, confident that their detection system and tripwire network would warn them to any danger before it arrived, despite Priest's worries.
"You know, Ripper began, now without his helmet, "I still haven't found who that lipstick belonged to…" He then took a bite in the chunk of meat he held.
Father chuckled, "Son, you most likely do not want to know." Priest scoffed as well.
Pig dropped his heavy weapon on the ground, well within arm's reach, and helped himself to a large piece of steak. "Agreed," He smiled, "unless it's that pretty little Eldar Farseer you keep exchanging sideway glances with when you think we're not looking…"
Strangely, it was Priest who choked the hardest at that. A lifetime of being told that to befriend a xeno was the highest heresy was hard to get rid of, but Ripper had his own surprise stroke at the implication.
"No way, I don't even know her name!" Rip cried, before being hit by a simple fact; she was the only person he knew wearing black lipstick. His face fell at the implication. Rip was not shy, but that woman was thousands of years old and that was quite scary in its own right…
"Guess you'll have to ask her." Came Pig's smug reply.
Rip dropped the piece of meat and blinked a few times. "She's old enough to be…" He thought about it. Some Eldars would be old enough to have met the Emperor!
Rip emitted a choking sound and quickly brought an hand to his throat. It burned, felt like he had the worst cold in history. There; just under his chin. A thumb-sized hole had appeared in the soft flesh.
His had instinctively searched for a second wound and he found it on the back of his neck, a millimeter left of his spine and just a bit smaller than the first.
He tried to warn the others, tried to yell 'sniper' or anything, but only a wet choked sound came out, accompanied by a stream of blood.
Team Zombie reacted in a split second, with pig and Father laying suppressive fire in the trees while Priest dragged the wounded NCO across the clearing to the safety of the jungle.
Shells from Pig's LMG attachment rained on the mossy floor, their tips red hot in the dark.
The rounds left streaks of smoke trough the night as they ripped the jungle apart. Father's shotgun attachement worked in a much similar way, only ejecting cases in a much smaller quantity.
Something came out of the jungle, five meters on Pig's right, and the gunner spun just in time to raise his weapon defensively. Whatever happened next went too fast for the Reaper to comprehend, but he found himself on his back, his stomach hurting like someone had ripped out his guts and staring down the barrel of an Executor pistol. Behind the gun was the skull mask of an Eversor assassin.
A black boot slammed into de gun sideway, spinning it in the owner's one handed grip, while a gloved hand struck the Eversor in the throat.
Father kicked the assassin away from his gunner and evaluated his opponent quickly.
Female, a little under six foot, slender but athletic, pumped full of combat drugs. This would be a battle of wits.
The Eversor recovered instantly and leapt at Father without a sound, power sword held high.
The old man sidestepped and kicked her in the ass, adding to the momentum.
The Eversor slammed in a tree and bounced off it. She spun right after impact but was met by an armored elbow to the forehead and a grappling hook in the guts.
The Eversor attempted to lunge at the Reaper as he stepped away, but the hook was keeping her pinned to the tree. Father kicked the assassin in the face and used the resulting disorientation to rip her power sword away before shocking her into unconsciousness with it.
"Priest, what's Ripper's status? Does he need an evac?" Father called. He really did not have time to check the young Reaper's injury and could not tell if it was bad or not.
The sniper's answer was quite simple; "Not anymore, he doesn't." There was a second of silence, then the old man added, "Ripper's KIA."