Chronicles of the darcsen brotherhood

Chapter 11: The black sheep

Before I could tell the rest of the warpack the bad news, some good news just came to us. Gin told us that he had found a group of survivors from the imperial attacks and he says that someone from that group knows where the location of the Empire slave hunters is, and for our surprise, it was Mannar's daughter, the one that he thought to be in Bruhl some days ago, she was finally here. We gave them some time to talk, since it was a long time that they didn't see each other, and after that we prepared to go.

"Are you guys feeling better now?" I asked them.

"It's okay, thank you Neroh." Mannar said to me.

"So, maybe we should know more about the location of the imperial slave hunters." Nazir said.

"Yes, I'll help in any way I can." Luna said to us.

We than marched our way out of the Militia HQ following her directions, she said that they were using some kind of cave system that was not known by the gallian military. We crossed a lot of dense forests and passed through a lot of mountainous terrain, despite all the difficulties, the tanks that were many times blocked by the huge rocks that appeared in our way were able to pass all of it.

While we were on our way to find the imperial salve hunters, we had a little chat in the truck with Luna, to know how she was taken by the imperials, after all, everyone thought that she was at Bruhl.

"I'm sorry if I made you worry dad, I was at Bruhl working with the Militia units, helping with the medical supplies when I heard rumors about Darcsen survivors hiding in the forests in need of medical help. I asked the Militia for help and some soldiers came with me, but when we got to the destination said by the rumors we were ambushed by imperial troops, only a few of us survived and we were taken by the imperials, since than they just kept moving us from one point to another, to keep us hidden from the Militia, I think. Sometimes they took us to these strange caves that had many entrances, that how they usually evade the Militia patrols and get us to another places, but sometimes they waited there for days to rest, that's why I think that most of the survivors might be there." She said.

"Well now, that explains a lot." I said.

As we continued the conversation we got close to a mountain "hidden" in the middle of a dense, closed pine forest with the trees almost reaching the skies, now I know why the gallian military didn't knew about this cave system, it was so well hidden from everyone, it makes me think how did the Empire found it in the first place. I send some troops with Nazir in command to see the situation, after a couple of hours they got back…

"What did you saw?" I asked Nazir.

"The place is crowded with imperial slave hunters, it was difficult to get a good look at the place, but we did it after some hours, at the total there are nine entrances, three at the north, two at the northwest, one at the east, two at the south and two at the west." Nazir said.

Now that's gonna be a lot of trouble for us, we can't cover all the entrances, we don't have enough soldiers for that.

"And also, we just saw an imperial squad coming from the north with more survivors, all darcsens." Nazir said.

"How many were they?" I asked.

"At least thirty."

And now the situation just got worse, we can't just save all the survivors with such a small time.

"Brother, what we're gonna do now?" Zanna asked me.

"I don't know, just give me some time and I'll come up with something." I said.

I walked some meters away from the warpack to come up with something, but it was really difficult, even if we try to ambush them with some soldiers hiding in the woods nearby the other entrances they would be quickly surrounded and annihilated by them, since they are in greater numbers, and we also can't get support from our tanks, the forest is so dense that they had to wait for us outside. I'm in a real trouble now.

As I was trying to think of a way to rescue the survivors I looked above and saw an owl, it wasn't really paying attention to me, it was looking to the other side of the forest, really far away. I did saw some movement, I prepared myself with my rifle, I loaded him and prepared myself, using an old log as support for my aim.

For my surprise it was just a little mouse that was looking for food, I looked up again and saw the owl preparing to fly, she took off and in the blink of an eye the owl grabbed then little mouse with its claws and flew right back to the branch of the tree, that gave me an idea on how to deal with our problem.

I came running back to the rest of the warpack, they were a little scared by the way that I was shouting "I got it!" so enthusiastic.

"What is it boy? Take a minute to breathe first." Mannar said.

"I know exactly what to do now!" I said it.

"Here is the plan, we won't be able to cover all the entrances to the cave because we don't have enough soldiers to do it, so, we're gonna try to direct them in an only direction were some of our units will be hidden to ambush them in the forest."

"But, didn't you though that they might be slaughtered? We don't have such a military force to deal with all of them, and we don't have the artillery support from our tanks." Nazir said.

"Well, that's why we won't be hidden on the ground…" I said.

Everyone is finding this a little complicated to understand.

"We will be hiding in the top of the trees!" I said, while pointing with my finger up.

"Well, that is a good plan, but still, even if the trees are high here, it doesn't guarantee that our troops will be safe, they still might be a easy target to hit…" Nazir said.

"Well, that's really a problem…" I said to him.

After all, I didn't thought of that, now I just made everyone get their hopes up for nothing…

"Hum… excuse me, you guys…" Nanah took a step forward.

"What is it Nanah?" I asked her.

"Well brother, me and Nanah had something done just for such an occasion!" Zanna said.

They showed us a wooden box that it was in the truck.

"What's this?" Zig asked.

"It's some camo jackets that we made for a time like this!" Zanna said.

"Well, now this might work, thanks you two!" I said.

Zanna replied with a smile while Nanah was a little blushed, I guess she's still a little embarrassed about that one night.

Now we had a plan, time to put it into action, I ordered that Nazir and Zig would stand at the trees around the entrances to the north while the rest of the warpack would be divided equally between the others entrances so that we could direct them to the north entrances. I wasn't really worried about the others that were hidden in the woods because they are using the camo jackets. Now there is no time to lose, we ran to our positions and waited for my signal. One of the things that I noticed about this cave system is that when we got close to the entrances there were no imperial guards around, they were so confident that the gallian forces were not going to find this place that they didn't even care to secure the perimeter. Well, now they'll pay for their lack of security.

I used a red flare to alert the other soldiers of the warpack to start the operation, we quickly charged to the cave system and open our way through unprepared squads of the imperial forces, it was not really of a great difficult to pass through them. As I thought, they tried to escape by the only entrances that were available, the north ones, and they also took the survivors with them.

For their surprise they received a welcome storm of bullets from our soldiers that were hidden on the walls, they got confused as they didn't knew what was happening, since the fire was coming from the up part of the trees and they were camouflaged, it was easy to take them out. After some seconds taking heavy fire from our troops the rest of them finally surrendered, we came closer to arrest them but the ambush unit remained hidden, in the case that they might pull the fast one on us. We escorted the survivors back to the Militia HQ together with the imperial prisoners, although they surrendered you could tell by looking at their eyes that they don't regret nothing that they did, almost as if they had no soul, deprived of their feelings, more like demons than human beings. When we came back to the Militia HQ, Nazir finally had found his friend Zaki among the survivors, it was hard to believe that the imperials were holding so many survivors in a such small cave system.

"Hey Nazir, long time no see hun?" Zaki said.

"Yeah, long time no see my friend!" Nazir replied.

They are both shaking hands when Lenna comes running in their direction and hugs Zaki, crying of happiness knowing that now he's okay.

But Nazir wasn't the only one that had a friend being held prisoner by the imperials, the whole warpack had being reunited with friends and families that were with the survivors that day. As the sun goes down and friends tell tales and share laughts on thing still bugs me, the way that the whole operation had gone was easy, to easy actually, this might mean that the Empire could had planned that as a trap, still, nothing happened at the time, what was their plan? While I was thinking to myself I was surprised. One of the buildings that were being used to deposit ammo had exploded and the whole HQ had gone crazy trying to put the fire out.

That's when I realized, we let an enemy in, and we didn't even knew…