The Hounds of Helghan (5)
As with all graduates of the academy, Mael earned the rank of Second Lieutenant and came out of training eager to deploy the knowledge, command, and arsenal he was given. The objective and details of his first mission came in the form of the latest undercover report at the chilly end of the year.
"Infiltration has been a success, Lieutenant," the agent told Mael through the faint crackle of private comms. "We are certain that the trafficking ring we've been tracking since June is based under Boror Refinery."
"Good work," Mael replied. "My squad will come to extract you shortly. Expect a full-scale assault. We have orders from higher up to collect trafficking victims and eliminate any members of the ring."
"Copy that, Lieutenant. Let me leave you with what I have on the ringleader."
Within moments, intel blinked onto Mael's handheld holo-viewer. Man went by the name Skinner. Dressed like a miner at the refinery, as his accomplices did, to blend in and avoid standing out. Numerous contacts with the black market. Managed trafficking networks extending as far as the arctic region of Helghan.
The undercover agent had done arguably the most difficult part of the mission: worming his way into the trust of elusive traffickers. Mael knew and accepted that he didn't have the talent for manipulation and subtlety. He wasn't built and wired for that. Instead his talents lay in hound-like precision to eliminate his enemies. That was what he did best.
Before Mael set out with his squad of enlisted men to head for their target, he laid down some ground rules. "As your commanding officer, I will make it clear that I have no tolerance for idle chat and loafing around. We are operating under a slim window of opportunity to catch these criminals by surprise. Three days to the refinery—no more, no less. I won't hesitate to leave behind any stragglers. We can't afford to waste time. Am I understood?"
"Yes, sir!" Left hands thrust out then swung in as fists thumped against chests in the Helghast salute.
Mael and his men traveled on foot. Coming in with any vehicles would have the subtlety and stealth of a sledgehammer to the head. Though they had to trek over a patch of desert to reach the refinery, they packed lightly and traveled briskly, drawing upon every ounce of inborn Helghast resilience. To Mael's satisfaction, no one wasted their breath on small talk. He was not the sort to fraternize and take interest in the men behind the masks. He just wanted them to carry out their duty. Good thing they didn't complain about the bitter wintery cold, either. Though they were nowhere near the arctic region, the desert could plummet to very low temperatures after sundown. Still, no reason to gripe if they had the right amount of layers.
Nothing in the intel mentioned Skinner and his partners in crime having any military training, but Mael would not be tempted to assume that taking them out would be easy. He would storm their hidden base assuming instead that they would know he was coming. After all, as he had learned from the academy, he would be punishing himself for underestimating the enemy.
The agent was supposed to be off comms throughout the three days, but on the second night, the crackle of the radio in Mael's helmet rudely interrupted him from his sleep.
Mael didn't bother to hide his ire. "You're supposed to be offline until we arrive," he hissed to the undercover agent. "What could be so important?"
"Apologies, Lieutenant, but I found out more on this so-called Skinner that I thought would interest you."
More intel courtesy of the agent blinked into the holo-viewer, and Mael sucked in a sharp breath. Finally he asked, "How certain are you of this information?"
"Quite certain, sir. Enough to risk going against your orders to go radio silent, if I may be so bold to say."
"Interesting," Mael admitted. "That changes things." On the next day, he broke the silence between him and his men to relay new orders to them. "Our order to protect and collect victims still stands. However, your new objective is to incapacitate every trafficker. Avoid killing them on sight if possible."
One of the soldiers mustered the nerve to ask, "Why the new orders, sir?"
"It's none of your concern," Mael snapped. "Your only concern is to do as I say."
The men dared not raise any more questions, a helmet obscured his face, and gloves hid the white-knuckled grip on his assault rifle, yet Mael felt as if the agent's report had unraveled every semblance of sternness and detachment he had strived to uphold.
Mael and his men arrived at Boror Refinery outside of work hours, at sundown, so they could infiltrate the traffickers' hidden base without interference from real miners. A blood-red hue bathed the sand and machinery alike. Mael may have made his new orders, but there would be blood. He would make sure of it.
He and his men closed in on the secret stairwell leading underground, and no sooner had they descended into darkness, they lit it up with gunshots. Traffickers disguised in dusty miner attire erupted into angered cries and pained shouts. Mael led the way in storming down the corridors, firing at non-vital areas like limbs and torsos. His targets keeled over like wheat to a scythe. Spatters of their blood painted the grimy walls and floors they slumped on.
"Round them up and bring them upstairs," Mael ordered his squad. "We'll collect the trafficking victims later."
The undercover agent showed himself by throwing off his cowl and respirator, so Mael and his men would recognize his face and hold their fire.
Mael tossed him a spare pistol he had brought. "Your job as a mole is done. Now get going and help my men."
Soon all the traffickers they could gun down were dragged through the stairwell and tossed onto the upper floor, where they laid in a bloody pathetic huddle as they groaned and cursed. Mael was the last to emerge from the stairs. He held aloft his assault rifle and fired a few rounds in the air to silence the defeated rabble.
"Which one of you is called Skinner?" he asked. His lens-covered gaze swept through the traffickers huddled before him. Menacing calm laced feigned politeness. "Don't be shy. I would just like a few words with you." Irritated by their continued noncompliance, he nodded to his men. "Make the pigs squeal."
They ground the butt of their rifles or the heel of their boots right onto the gunshot wounds. The traffickers writhed and screamed in agony.
Finally, one of them cried out, "It's me, I'm Skinner!"
Mael curled the fingers of his rifle-free hand toward himself. "Bring him to me."
One of his soldiers hoisted up the man claiming to be Skinner and dropped him before Mael's feet. Skinner landed unceremoniously on his belly. He had been shot in the right shin. Mael couldn't remember if he had delivered the shot or not. He knelt down and grabbed Skinner by the cowl to force eye contact.
Erratic ragged breaths sounded from Skinner's respirator. "Who are you? What do you want with me?"
Mael let out a mirthless chuckle. "Who am I?" He pressed on the side of his helmet to lift his visor. "Wouldn't you like to know."
Skinner, who lacked the military-issued helmet with a visor, continued to stare with what Mael must assume to be a blank, dumb look behind the goggles. "I-I don't know who you are, sir."
"Really, now." Mael pulled him closer, keeping a vicelike grip on the man's cowl and scalp. "I know very well who you are, 'Skinner.' Or, should I say, Coran Radec." Mael let go with a downward wrench of his hand, and Skinner's head snapped and rebounded from the refinery floor with a dull crack.
Skinner, Coran, coughed and sputtered on what must be blood, possibly a loose tooth, behind his respirator.
Mael went on as if he hadn't heard the sputtering. "I should have guessed from the name you chose to hide behind. Maybe no one else here knows why you went by 'Skinner,' but as your brother, I do."
"Brother?" Coran trembled as he looked up at the soldier looming over him. "Mael? Is that really you?"
Mael rose to his full height and bore a glare of disdain down into Coran before hiding it behind his visor. "Look at the two of us now. I am a soldier of the Helghan Empire, while you lead a gang of traffickers. You are worse than animals by exploiting women and children for labor and pleasure. You lead the worst kind of scum crawling on the earth." He extended his disgust to the traffickers still huddled and hemmed in by his men. "I was given orders to pick off you lot swiftly and silently, without taking prisoners. It was going to be nothing personal. Then I got word that you're involved, Coran. And not just involved, but the head of the entire operation. How can this be anything but personal?"
Coran rolled onto his back and cringed away from Mael, pressing a gloved hand on his right leg in a futile effort to staunch the bleeding. "Y-You won already. Look at me. I can't go anywhere. I won't put up a fight. Please, go ahead and just kill me like you were told to do."
Mael snorted with scorn. "A quick shot to the head would be too good for you, Coran. Much too good for you."
"You...you want an apology?"
Coran's meek suggestion made Mael bark out a bitter laugh. "To hell with apologies. It's too late for that. No, I don't want an apology out of you." Mael's voice lowered to a whisper that came out as a hiss through his respirator. "I'm sure you didn't intend for it to be helpful, but you've taught me a lesson I'll never forget. Now I want you to learn it."
Mael tossed aside his assault rifle and pulled out his StA-18 pistol to fire a single shot into Coran's groin. A red star burst from between his legs. Coran thrashed on the floor and uttered a terrible high-pitched scream. His accomplices looked away, while Mael's squad looked on. Perhaps taken aback at someone they thought to be a superior who didn't dabble in sadism.
Coran, once a boy who liked to make his little brother piss his pants, was now the one pissing blood. To Mael, this wasn't sadism. Merely poetic justice long overdue.
Mael rose his voice just over Coran's sobbing. "To be weak, powerless, unable to even get off the ground...do you know what that feels like now, brother?"
Coran writhed like a worm baking in the sun, his blood forming a pool underneath him. His screams and sobs made Mael feel like his question went unheard.
Mael raised his voice to a shout now. "Well, brother? Answer me! Do you know what that feels like?"
"Yes," Coran cried out. "Yes!"
Mael's voice dipped to a whisper only he could hear. "Good." He lifted his pistol to fire one more shot at his older half-brother, this time in the head.
The screams and sobs stopped instantly. Coran's body jerked once, then went limp. Blood seeped from the gaping hole in his forehead. Mael's gaze lingered on the sight, to draw as much satisfaction from it as he possibly could. Then it lifted back to the remaining traffickers, and dutiful coldness settled back into him.
"Back to our original orders," he told his men. "Execute every trafficker here. Leave no one alive."
Pleas for mercy went unheard as guns were turned on the condemned. Within moments, pools of blood and spent bullets dotted the floor of the refinery. Mael and his men didn't stick around to clean up. Instead they went back down the stairwell to retrieve trafficking victims—mostly women and children, stick-thin from malnutrition and even paler than usual from little exposure to the outside world. Like a flock of lambs, they were herded out of the dark, cramped rooms they had been forced into.
Mael's squad had stormed into the refinery without vehicles, as well as without the worry of finding some way to bring the victims back to the safety of Pyrrhus. They could simply use dropships stationed at the refinery.
Already cadaver beetles were scuttling out of hiding to pick at the feast of remains provided by the military. As Mael boarded a dropship, he watched the beetles claim the body of his dead brother, a remnant of his past, before he turned his sights to Pyrrhus, to his future as a soldier of Helghan.