Blue dusk cast a darkening curtain over the desert.
Soon, night swallowed them whole, perched at the edge of a low sand dune. With no moon, no light at all, he strained to listen over the rise and fall of the sharp wind. Nothing. His senses afforded him no insight into what was going on, but Anatolius remained where he was. Intent on the nothingness. True nothingness does not exist, he knew- something must always inhabit the empty space.
He turns to Isaac, who pries his eyes from his viewfinder. "Well, we've got them. Half a mile up past the ridge; they've moved their camp several times since our last recon."
Anato trains his ears on the void again. Nothing- then after a few seconds- something. Amidst the roar of the wind, a piece of machinery whirs and pops. Then a shout, drowned-out and colorless.
"I hear them. Sounds like they have motorized equipment."
"They do," said Isaac. "A few vehicles and generators; nothing for us to worry about. At least, as long as we don't get caught."
"How many are we dealing with?"
A brief silence as he peers through his sights. "Twenty-three. Must've had a skirmish with another group recently."
"Easy."
"As long as we evade detection until we're done," he reached into his coat and handed Anatolius an oblong-shaped pill.
"What's this?" He asked, unable to make out it's features in the dark.
Isaac was staring through his viewfinder again. "Cateye, pharmaceutical grade. Normally we'd just give you night vision, but right now we can't risk flying supplies in. It'll help you see for the duration of the mission."
He popped the pill, washed it down with still-cold water from his gecko skin canteen. "When do we move?"
A second passed.
"Now."
In a blur that went unseen the two men were over the dune and headed for the ridge outlining the makeshift Black Widow base. Through the black and without moonlight, Anatolius guessed it was about a quarter-mille away...
His feet pound silently into the sand. With the wind streaking by he feels the cateye taking effect before he's even halfway there, his pupils dilating as natural night vision brightens his surroundings. He was right about the distance. Several paces ahead Isaac darts towards the ridge and reaches it shortly after- he's fast, extremely fast, even by Anatolius' standards.
The question is- who trained you?
Hitting the edge of the ridge, he joins Isaac and peers through the scope of his sniper rifle. The man smiles. Simple. The Black Widows were set up in a loose grid formation that tapered into an oval circle; tents criss-crossed and centered around several power generators, with vehicles on the outskirts, a few lights but mostly campfires. It was the kind of disorganized cohesion that would let them settle in one place for as long as they needed, but could pack up and be gone without a trace with but a moment's notice. Crude, effective, and simple.
They just couldn't get caught.
"Most of them are sleeping in their tents," Isaac commented. "We should be able to breach their perimeter without notice- I know I don't need to tell you this, but study the guard's patrol patterns. We'll plant C4 on the vehicles and generators as well as those two large tents. Then we retreat to a safe distance and pick off the rest."
"C4?"
"Plastic explosives, ex-military. Big bang, little package." Isaac hands him a drawstring satchel.
"Easy," he said, running his crosshairs over a guard at the edge of the camp.
"Especially for someone such as you. Your gun-cams should be online and working… the Greyrunners have a front-row seat to the show. Oh, and thermal imaging shows they store most of their fuel there. When you're ready, just give the word."
In a single sweep the Frumentarii analyzed the entire setup: the lazy patterns of the guards, which ones were more tired than the others, the dark spaces he would weave between and who he would kill first, second, third, last. His mind was like a mechanical calculator, weighing probabilities and logical outcomes. As underhanded as it was, Anato needed a fight like this.
"Let's go."
They descend into the gulch like predators after a herd. Side by side, Anatolius leaps from a slab of rock and hits the bottom, lithely rolling with the impact. The camp is less than fifty paces away. He unsheathes his sniper rifle and sets it against a boulder- this would be the fallback point where he would pick off the survivors and set up a cross-fire with Isaac. The Greyrunner is ahead of him now, weaving off to the left and reaching the perimeter of the camp behind a big truck-like vehicle fringed with rust. Anato slides out his silenced pistol and heads to the other end.
There were four Widows keeping watch on his side of the camp. As the guard closest to him turns his back to walk the other way- while the other closest two converse idly by a campfire- the man reaches the first tent.
He presses his ear to the thin fabric. Silence, and then a sleep-filled grumble. Ducking down Anatolius reaches into the satchel and removes a brick of C4. Sets it right next to the outer flap.
He pokes his head around the corner. The two guards are patrolling now, their patterns lazy but haphazard enough to not be predictable; Anato chooses to evade them for now, eyes on the one on the outskirts by a smaller tent to his right, out of sight of the rest.
The weakest of the herd.
Isolating him, the man crept through the first few hundred feet of the camp and came out the other side, behind the Widow who was looking out at the ridge where they'd been moments ago. Hidden from view from the rest, he walked right up to him.
The guard, a tall man with long, oily hair, spins around, eyes widening with shock, then horror. The Frumentarii raises his pistol at his head- thwip!- and drops into the sand like dead weight.
Anato picked up the body and left it behind the first tent, next to the C4 charge. Then, he moved into the camp.
Edging through the shadows, he passes tents and vehicles, dropping charges in carefully concealed places along the way. All-natural night vision guides his steps. Up ahead there's another guard, standing in front of a makeshift pavilion in the center- his next target, and the most alert. Isaac is nowhere to be found.
Anatolius tucks away his silenced pistol and hefts his submachine gun capped with a broad suppressor and reflex scope. Crouches in place and aims at the guard.
Meum propositum esse verum. The phrase steeled his hands as he peppered him with silent shots to the head and torso. The guard shredded like Pre-War paper. Not a single miss, and the last two guards on his end weren't close. Hopefully Isaac was dealing with the others.
By now several minutes had ticked by as Anato timed his movements and kills. A few more and the survivors would become suspicious… he had to work quickly to avoid detection. The hum of the generators burned overhead while he cleared the breadth of a vacant campfire's light, pressing into the heart of the camp where his third target patrolled dilatorilly, looking completely disinterested in anything- the man re-equips his pistol and slides out his matte black combat knife. The moon wasn't out, but there was still light. No chances.
Anatolius stalks him; right past the other guard, glued to shadow. Stars twinkle overhead. His feet slide adroitly through the sand and somehow leave no tracks, his movements mathematically precise. The guard pauses for a second, near the generators…
Cocking his knife-hand back, the man pushes up against him and slides the blade right between his shoulder blades. Twist. His heart stops beating instantly- his gurgled cry drowned out by the incessant rumble of the closest generator. Anato eases him down behind it, pulls the blade out, and sets a charge.
The last patrolman on his side of camp was getting apprehensive. He circled around the inner ring of tents as Anato placed a final charge at the small fuel depot and crept out of view. His heart rate quickened, spurred on by the guard searching for his vanished compatriots… the bodies were well-hidden; but one wrong move and the outpost would light up in more ways than one.
He tails the chaperon from afar and uses the tents and enclosures to break any potential line of sight before he closes in, coiled like a radscorpion. Now. With a twitch of the hair-trigger on his 12.7, three hollow points end his life.
That's the last of them. In the less than four minutes it took to kill the guards, Isaac would easily be finished and have placed the charges on his side- but where is he?
"Hey!"
Startled, the Legionary turns around. A tall, light-skinned man in his sleepwear is aiming an assault rifle right at him, sleep still fresh in his eyes. His finger tightens around the trigger before Anato could react.
Faex…
A shot rings out. Something grazed by Anatolius and pierces the tent next to him, then another shot from a different direction. The Widow about to shoot him falls dead where he stands.
Isaac steps out from the darkness, pistol smoking.
"Close call. One of them woke up and warned the survivors; we need to move."
"Alright," Anato says, snapping out of it. "The charges are planted. Do they know where we are?"
Isaac looks behind him. If he was the least bit apprehensive, he showed no sign.
"No, but let's keep it that way. Time to give your future employers something to look at."
They slip back out into the desert without a trace. Behind them, silhouetted figures move around the camp. The pair reaches their fallback position- where Anato put his sniper- Isaac grips the detonator. Shouts rise up behind them.
"Shall we?"
The man nods. "Do it."
Click. A plume of fire flickers into existence and lights the desert ablaze in conflagratory fury. Within seconds the light reaches them in their safe place, and secondary explosions mark the demise of the fuel depot and more resilient vehicles.
His sniper rifle in both hands Anatolius peers into the inferno. Men and a woman on fire stagger out, blazing like effigies. They remind him of tribals performing fireside rituals, flailing in their liturgy of death.
"Well, mission accomplished," he barely heard Isaac say.
It is familiar, something that echoes the past… one by one they fall as Anatolius' mind went back…
Back to where it all began…
.
.
.
The fires grew with the ceremony, bathed in orange and the cool glow of the moon. Sitting out this dance, having joined in so many before, he looked towards the Chieftain, his father. Atop his elaborate cathedra, Elias smiled broadly at his son and raised his mug, eyes bright with pride and happiness and everything else this Feastday could afford. He nodded and smiled back, his own mug empty at his feet.
His eyes return to the place they'd been resting for most of the night- diagonally across the bonfire to his left where the girl sat, dressed starkly against his own people, wrapped up in conversation with an elder. She was an outsider, and yet it was as if she belonged there on that log bench, talking passionately about things she barely knew. The girl that fell from the sky. An enigma in his small, mundane world surrounded by huts and badlands and the stretching plateaus of northern Utah. If he was an heir to a tribe, then she was the heir to the whole world.
As if she knew he was watching her eyes slid across the space to meet his. She smiled warmly, lighting his soul ablaze. Laughter rose above the smoke. Politely disengaging conversation, she got up and walked over with a grace completely alien to him. She sat down at the empty space beside him.
"Hey."
"Hey," he said back to her. "Are you enjoying the feast?"
"I am," she replied, smiling. She watched him curiously as shadows from the light played across his face. "You seem distracted."
He didn't respond immediately. She placed her hand lightly on his arm, her touch electrifying him in the firelight. The aroma of roasted pig drifted across them with the woodsmoke, encircling the commemoration and drifting up towards the blinking stars. He couldn't tell his friends about it, not even old Hagrem, or Elder Josh. Not yet. But her...
"During the Second Ceremony, Elias told me he is retiring into Akshlah earlier than I thought he would- earlier than anyone thought. He won't admit it, but his health is deteriorating."
"You mean he's dying?" Despite only having only spent less than a year with the tribe, she seemed genuinely concerned.
He sighed. "Yes. I saw him coughing up blood in his tent the other night. I think it's cancer; if it's not, it's something just as bad. I know I shouldn't pry into his health, he's a stubborn man, but-"
She inched closer. "It's okay, you don't need to explain yourself. He's your father. You have every right to be worried."
"I just wish there was something I could do."
"Maybe I can help."
"Really?"
She looked up to the stars. "Yeah. Before I left home I received full medical training from some of the best field doctors in Chicago. Cancer is still a grey area, but I know treatments, and I'm a pretty decent sonographer," she looked back into his eyes. "I'd be happy to help. We may not be able to save his life, but we can prolong it."
She never ceased to amaze him, and this was no different. She had an answer to every problem he had, a solution to every debacle the tribe found itself in; it didn't matter how big or small it was. The enigmatic girl had slowly been accepted into the tribe and since then she'd helped save more lives than the wisest of Elders, introducing technology and modern medicine to the general population. They called her Asharanae, 'The Angel of the Desert', among other things.
"That would be great, even though I don't know how much it would help. The badlands have a cycle that we can't escape no matter what we do. And I know he's a part of it- even moreso than I."
She grabbed his hand and squeezed, soaking up the vulnerability in his eyes that never showed.
"He may be, but cycles can be broken." She paused for a moment, looked away, down at her feet. "I feel like this is more than just your dad."
A silence settled between them.
"I know what's coming, and I'm not ready for it." He knew it had been coming for his twenty short years here in Utah, with his tribe and his family, but there was never a time he felt prepared for the very thing he was groomed to uphold his entire life.
"It's your tribe now, or it will be very soon. You'll never feel ready for something like that. All you can do is embrace this responsibility given to you. I know you can do it. And I will help you in any way that I can."
He would have to. The future of his people depended on it.
His mouth slowly opened into a smile. "You always have a way of putting things into perspective."
Without warning, she grabbed and kissed him. The firelight, the music, the smells all coalesced and blurred through his consciousness…
And everything faded to black…
.
.
.
"You alright, Anato? You look like you saw a ghost."
The corpses smoldered, charred and blackened in the blazing ruin fed by the stockpiles of fuel. He blinks once, twice. He saw a ghost all right. The worst kind- a ghost of something that had once been real to him.
"I'm fine," he says, looking down at his sniper. There hadn't been a need to use it due to the sheer size of the explosion. Everything had been consumed.
Knelt down next to him, Isaac is still surveying the carnage. Something flashed on his wrist. "Good, don't zone out on me quite yet. You gave your future employer one hell of a show. They're ready to bring you in, whenever you are. We could go now if you aren't too tired. Otherwise feel free to rest up- we can go tomorrow."
The man smiles, grim, ready. "I'm never tired."
Isaac chuckles.
"I'll take that as a yes."