Chapter 17: Call to War.

Jack and Tik burst into the intelligence centre which was a bunker-like building staffed by all of the military arms of Clan Mason, it was staffed by a mixture of intelligence specialists sand analysts as well as SIGINTS or signals intelligence operatives whose job was to constantly scan the airwaves collecting intelligence before decrypting it and passing it to who needed it while maintaining contact with all active Clan Mason battle groups.

They found Seeker Silver Dimondscale and his pack sat there hovering over an intelligence operative's shoulder, they all wore the same angered, worried expression on their faces, including the tall male Praetorian intelligence operative, Jack knew him from Aine and Murphy's hive, he was a Savior called W'Xen.

"Report," Jack said in his authoritative voice which made the whole room snap to attention as he and Tik approached both striding across the room side by side, even Celia and her pack seemed to snap to attention.

W'Xen turned his large crested head towards Jack and Jack instantly noticed that his Yautja mate had been hard at work once again, the pair were a well-known couple around the clan but then they were the only male Yautja and a male Praetorian couple around so it wasn't that hard to stand out walking hand in hand through the city, but just like any other couple they were fully accepted as bigotry simply was not a thing here, all were accepted and defended equally.

But W'Xen's husband was, despite being a Hunter, quite the budding artist who seemed to take great joy in decorating his husband's head crest with little hunting trophies much like Tik's dread charms, he also liked to draw little symbols on his husband's crest, two that caught Jack's eye said 'Gorgeous Male' and 'Beloved' in Yautja and drawn in a bright pink ink towards the rear of his crest, it just made Jack smile for some reason.

But despite his fabulous get up W'Xen was as professional as you could get, the man knew his job inside out and was fucking good at it, "We've received a long-distance relay call from the fleet Stationed at the Serpentinus homeworld, the Serpentinus received a distress call from the Raptorian homeworld, a large combined Scalathor and Draconis fleet have shown up attacked and disabled their defences and their fleet and launched a full-scale invasion of their planet, that's all they were able to get out before the Scalathor and Draconis jammed their comms" W'Xen said.

Jack looked at Tik and he could tell by the scowl on her face she was fuming, "Any idea on numbers?" she asked her voice as dark as night.

W'Xen shook his large head making the little charms tacked onto the outer ridge of his head crest sway and jingle, "No Grand Matriarch and we are dealing with a fair time delay in transmission time here so we also have no idea on what the status of the Raptorians is as of current either" he said looking up at her before gesturing to his holo screen.

"By my estimation, this must-have just as we were leaving Serpentinus space so they already have a good headstart on us and possibly a dug in foothold on their planet, though we don't know anything about their defences," W'Xen said.

Jack looked at Tik and she clicked thoughtfully, "Contact the Serpentinus via the fleet and tell them that we are on our way to assist, put out an all stations call that I want all available Hunter, Seeker, Savior and Battle Angels on station and to report to the Dreamer, looks like we're going to war" Jack said firmly and W'Xen nodded and immediately began calling into his comms as jack turned to Tik.

"I get the feeling we're really going to have to quite a fight on our hands here my love," he said and Tik nodded thoughtfully as the pair began to stride through the intelligence centre which had gone utterly crazy as calls were being placed to all units to get their tails to the Dreamer or any of the other available ships, their fleet might not bee large but it was seriously powerful, designed to punch above its weight to make up for their lack of numbers.

"I"ll contact Citrus hive, something tells me we might need the Dreadnaught much sooner than we believed, this is escalating very quickly," she said a note of concern in her voice and Jack saw what was worrying her and placed a reassuring hand on her broad, muscled shoulder.

"Don't you worry my love they would have to be truly idiotic to attack this place, a planet full of Xeno's, hunters and humans all ready to defend this place with their dying breath, they'd be literally running back up their loading ramps the second they set foot on our beloved soil the second they sat what was waiting for them, no one fucks with Clan Mason and lives to tell about it" he said proudly and he could see that cheered her up and her back straightened and her chest puffed out, "There my proud huntress, now what do you say we go and kick the ever-living fuck out of some sexist bigots?" he said and Tik drew her mandibles up into a dark smile.

"Love to my heart's star, lead the way," she said and the pair headed to the shuttle bay.

As they pulled into the Dreamer's shuttle bay they saw a stream of Hunters, Seekers and all the others streaming in from the station, it included Liam who had obviously caught a shuttle up from the intelligence centre after leaving the majority of his pack behind, though Jack noticed Celia was with him and she looked very concerned and was sticking close to Liam, but Jack could instantly see Liam's line of thinking bringing her along as she was an ambassador and belonged to a species that the Raptorians knew and trusted, so only smart to bring her along to facilitate the introduction, but he had obviously left the rest of his pack back at home.

Jack and Tik made their way to the bridge of the Dreamer where they were shortly joined by both Liam and Celia not to mention Ryan and Shena, Sela eleth would be remaining behind this time to run the Clan in their absence, all of the bridge crew snapped to attention as Liam's crisp voice rang out, "Grand Patriarch and Matriarch on deck!" he yelled, if he wasn't a Seeker he'd make one hell of a drill sergeant.

"At ease everyone, ok here's the score, the Raptorian homeworld has been invaded by both the Scalathor and the Draconis and they have called to their allies for aid, now the Serpentinus are in no shape to respond, so we will stand for them, this is likely to be a full-scale conflict so I want everybody with their game faces on, we're going to show both the Scalathor and Draconis what happens to those who fuck with the friends of Clan Mason," Jack said and the whole bridge crew roared with pride, Jack turned to Tik and she nodded and stepped forwards taking the reigns.

"Once all personnel are loaded signal the fleet and set a course for the Raptorian homeworld," she said and there was a flurry of salutes and everyone took their stations.

During the series of hyperspace jumps the Dreamer dropped relay satellites in the systems they passed through, now Clan Mason's comms satellites are equipped with a version of Yautja cloaking tech in order to make them next to impossible to detect, but just like any other tech of this nature there was always vulnerability though in Jack's opinion anyone smart enough to crack through the encryption codes that come out of Citrus and Yoshi's hive considering they used a programming language that used a combination of Yautja, Human and Xeno languages then they could fucking keep it, it would self destruct as soon as it detected an intrusion anyway.

Now the only ship in the Clan Mason fleet that didn't have full stealth capabilities as it had been launched ahead of time, it had both radar and thermal protection which made it invisible to sensors but visual sensors would pick it up and a heavy cruiser wasn't exactly easy to hide, it was a mistake that Yoshi's hive had not repeated with the Dreadnaught as the cloaking generators had been one of the first things they had installed once the hull was complete, but they did have Xeno engineers from the hive on board working to fix the problem being aided by Savior engineers.

This would become prudent as they jumped into the system that contained the Raptorian homeworld and instantly realized that they were seriously outgunned, it seemed that the Scalathor had also learned from their encounter with Clan Mason, this time they'd come out in force, serious force.

"Grand Patriarch and Matriarch I'm picking up multiple signatures, there has to be at least twenty cruisers out there!" their armoury officer exclaimed.

"Engage stealth mode and put us into orbit behind the nearest moon, make sure you keep it between us and them," Jack said quickly and the orders were quickly relayed to the fleet, the Yautja ships in the fleet were not cruiser class in fact they were roughly the size of a heavy torpedo boat, designed to hit hard and get out quick, but even with six of them in tow and the two regular cruisers they didn't have the firepower to deal with a threat this size, a full head-on conflict was not a smart idea because as powerful as the Dreamer was she wasn't invincible, taking them head-on would be suicide and both Jack and Tik knew it.

Jack felt the weight of the bridge crews expectant looks, he was the Grand Patriarch and a Dream Warrior to boot, they all expected him to know exactly what to do, but it Tik that stepped forwards placing her huge hand on his shoulder as she did, her eyes were bright and her body language spoke volumes, she was cool, confident and in control, Grand Matriach Tik was in the house.

"It's obvious that we have struck the fear of Paya into their hearts! And this is good that means they are both scared of us and respect us but no matter if we are outgunned or not we are still going to kick them right in the scaly cunts with a Clan sized golden boot!" she roared so loudly and proudly that Jack swore everyone on the ship could hear her without the comms.

There were growls of agreement, "Now we cannot beat them with brute force as we are outgunned so we will instead defeat them with superior tactics and intelligence, every person on this bridge is a full-blooded hunter and we have all taken down a prey far bigger and more dangerous than they are, smarts win the day, so listen up here's the plan..." Ti said and she began to outline her frankly brilliant idea and a smile crept onto Jack's face and righteous fury slid into his heart.

Tik's plan was surprisingly simple, elegant and fucking fiendish in its simplicity, it made use of their current strength in stealth over their massive weakness in firepower, all of the torpedo boats, shuttles and armour they had had cloaking tech, a ground assault team would sneak through their blockade riding in a torpedo boat where it would be discharged out of sight in the shuttles, they would proceed down to the surface and attempt to make contact with the Raptorian defenders while reporting the troop strengths and locations of Scalathor and Draconis troop formations, they would then act as guerrilla troops assisting the Raptorians by gathering intel and using hit and run tactics to weaken the Scalathor as it was amazing what a handful of angry Yautja and Xenos appearing out of the jungle and hitting you before vanishing into thin air would do to morale, not to mention Dream Warriors.

Meanwhile, a couple of their cloaked ships would slip into the Scalathor and Draconis blockade and identify weaknesses in it, Tik would then lead a host of assault teams to board the unsuspecting cruisers and turn them on their former owners seeding chaos among their ranks while also making off with their ships before finally unleashing the full might of the Clan's fleet onto them.

"Sounds like a plan my love let's do it," Jack said before Tik grinned at him and pulled him into a tight and deep kiss.

"Go make us some new friends my love lets show these pauk's what happens when you pauk with friends of Clan Mason," she said growled deeply and darkly.

Jack nodded and with one last kiss, he broke from her, "Seekers on me" he said and with a parting kiss to his beloved one Liam fell in step with him, Ryan too but he didn't have to kiss his beloved one goodbye, Shena was coming with him.

As they passed through the ship the call had gone up so Seekers and Hunters started to appear out of side walkways and fell in step as the ever-growing group made it's way first to the armoury before on to the shuttle bay, once there Jack briefed the gathered group.

"Alright people listen up, we're going up against a far larger and well-supported force, the odds are not in our favour here so it's up to us to turn things to favour us, we are going to need to use every one of those skills you've been taught, this is exactly what they taught me to do in the SAS, to take on a much larger force and to disrupt and defeat them through superior tactics, so sabotage, hit and run tactics and guerrilla warfare are going to be the order of the day, we are not going to be grouped together as one large force as it will defeat the objective of what we are trying to do, so here's how it's going to be split, one Seeker, one Hunter and One Battle Angel team will form a team, this will form six teams of twelve, each team will be codenamed by metals, I will take Gold, Ryan you are Silver, Liam Bronze, Analise Copper, Rem Iron, Levat Steel, organise the numbers yourselves," Jack said.

He was met with looks of astonishments as most of these Seekers were used to being members of other teams not leading their own but they took severe pride in Jack's trust in them, each of these senior Seekers would be assigned three junior Seekers to make up their teams, Jack assigned the Hunter teams to the Seeker teams as well as the Battle Angel teams, each team was made up of four making a total team strength of twelve, which was the size of a large special forces infiltration team.

"We have to assume that the jamming signal that's preventing the Raptorians from communicating with anyone is going to affect our comms as well, this is going to mean that each team is going to have to work independent and in the dark, we will be taking comm relays with us to set up to hopefully restore some form of local comms, each of the Hunter teams has an electronic warfare expert and it will be their jobs to try and cut through the jamming and also the enemy encryption, but bear in mind once each group touches down you will be on your own, this is going to be a an stealth orbital drop without a pod as we don;t want to leave anything to trace back to our presence until we are ready for them to know we are here, but out first priority will be to make contact with the Raptorians and to help them how ever we can, so that is our first order of business, from what we know they live in underground cities due to highly aggressive fauna so while on the surface be on your guard and look for caves which could be an entrance to the underground though be warned they are likely to be heavily defended, so stealth protocalls until you are safely inside" Jack said which caused a bit of discussion among the gathered members.

"Alright people and the last thing I should mention, as always while you are on the ground there you are representing Clan Mason, you are there to assist and aid these people, render any aid you can especially to civilians, we want to make the best possible impression on them, with regards to the enemy rules of engagement are simple, you are weapons free but be smart about it, I seriously don't recommend running guns blazing towards an armour division, but sneaking into their camp and placing charges on their vehicles and turning them into scrap is always a good idea, any questions?" Jack finished looking around expectantly but heads were being shaken and he smiled.

"Good that's what I like to see, alright people gear up for a week on the ground and let's load up," Jack said and everyone saluted and fell out to pick up their gear from the quartermaster that they'd need outside of their own personal gear which they kept in their lockers and were all already carrying.

The shuttle ride over to the Yautja torpedo boat Patriach's Pride was only a short one and the teams didn't bother to disembark from their drop shuttles, they weren't taking the pods down as they didn't want any evidence of their drop to be present so it would be an orbital drop to wingsuit drop with each team dropping into a different area on the rough map that they had from their long-range sensors, another thing that they would be doing would be mapping the place as well so when they broke through the jamming they could share their data.

The Patriach's Pride was using its stealth drive and advanced Yautja cloaking to slip right through the blockade, they could already see evidence of both the Raptorian defence platforms and ships that had been destroyed by the Scalathor and Draconis forces floating in orbit, lots of pieces of debris were being pulled out of orbit and into the planet's atmosphere where they were burning up on reentry which pleased Jack as it would make their entry trails utterly unnoticed as it was happening so often it looked like a mini meteor shower, but it did bring him a great deal of sadness when he thought of how many of those trails probably belonged to the innocent Raptorian crews who were simply defending their home.

After what felt like an age during which Jack felt like a submariner silently slipping past the much larger ships sailing on the sea of black, once they were close enough the shuttles silently slipped out of the bays and the Patriach's Pride held position ready to pick up the returning shuttles before heading back to the Dreamer's side, it was go time.

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"Alright people on your feet its time, check yourself then your partner I don't want a single problem on the way down, I want this smooth and flawless," Seeker Silver Dimondscale said standing up and checking his blue powered Seeker armour, Smoke felt his heart rate starting to spike abit and his chest clenched tight as he stood up and checked down his bright golden Hunter armour, he'd never felt claustrophobic in these power suits before but suddenly everything felt like it was closing in on him and he started feeling like he was going to hyperventilate.

Serval a huge Yautja male and Seeker Tamer seemed to notice and he turned to look at him, he reached out and placed a huge hand on Smoke's shoulder and he looked up, "Chin up kid, you're a full-blooded Hunter now, keep your chin up and you'll do fine, just trust in your brothers and sisters, ok?" he said in a very deep voice and suddenly Smoke felt a warm glow rising up in his chest and his fear eased allowing him to breathe.

This was Smoke's first deployment since passing out of training and gaining his full-blooded status, he had been so proud the day that the Grand Matriarch had burned the symbol into his skin to elevate him to full-blooded status, Smoke was actually his nickname as his real name was Peter Samson, but everyone called him Smoke because of his ice-white hair and bright grey eyes that according to absolutely everyone looked like he had eyes filled with smoke, though no matter how many times he looked into the mirror he never saw it himself, but the name had stuck and now it had gotten t the point where both his parents and even his two elder sisters both in the Saviors as engineers called him Smoke.

He was the grand old age of nineteen years old and fresh out of the academy after passing his Hunter training and then training as an Electronic Warfare expert or operative if you would, his Hunter team had been picked by Seeker Silver Dimondscale for Bronze team for this operation and he'd felt a rush of both pride, excitement and fear all rolled into one, serving under such a powerful Seeker was such an honour and a privilege when he'd first seen a Dream Warrior and what they could do it had taken his breath away, but here he was now a Hunter in his own right and he'd been assigned to Hunter team six once he'd been passed out of EW school under Sargent Yalek.

Speaking of which he felt another huge hand on his shoulder and he was spun around on the spot, "Don't you worry corporal, you'll do fine we'll make sure we bring that pretty ooman arse of yours back in one piece and I'm sure you'll do our Grand Matriarch proud, just remember your training and pay attention, no running off on your own and playing rogue hunter understood?" Yalek a truly massive Yautja female who was in charge of Hunter team six said in her deep gravely voice.

"Y-Yes Sargent" Smoke said somewhat nervously as Yalek checked his armour and gear over before patting him on the side of his helmet where his cheek would have been and giving him a thumbs up.

"Twenty seconds! I want a nice tight formation you know your place in it, stick to it and watch your lines, don't cut over one another" Seeker Dimondscale said heading to the tail ramp and they all engaged their magnetic boots as the atmosphere vented and the tail ramp opened, the greenness of the planet and blackness of space contrasted each other so beautifully, "We will lose comms the moment we are outside of the ship so remember your signs, ok here we go!" Seeker Dimondscale said and with that, he launched himself out of the hatch followed by the other Seekers and that's when Yalek shoved him forwards and out the door.

Smoke's stomach lurched as suddenly gravity didn't exist for him any more, he began to spin like he was doing a lazy somersault, his HUD flickered into life and began to tell him he was off the preprogrammed flight path which appeared like red lines in his HUD, Smoke was always amazed by the utter silence of space, it was like it penetrated your very soul-sucking out every drop of noise from your head.

He straightened out the thrusters in his suit allowed him to stall his spin and correct his line which changed first to yellow as he got closer and then to green once he was inside them, all around him the others were doing the same and they were forming up into a loose arrow shape with Seeker Dimondscale at its tip, Smoke's position was on the far left tip with Zem of the Battle Angels on the far right one, she was kinda hard to miss even in the vastness of space thanks to being one of the only Praetorians in the Battle Angels, her beloved human husband served on the Dreamer as an engineer.

The visor of Smoke's helmet began to glow as they hit the atmosphere and the heat shields deployed to protect him till he was clear of it, he'd only done a couple of these orbital drops and he'd been shitting himself every single time, once they cleared the outer atmosphere they're braking systems engaged and their wings deployed putting them into a diving glide that allowed them to stabilise their flight path until they were able to pull out of it and begin a proper glide, below them a sea of incredibly dense lush green fanned out as far as the eye could see in every direction, it was even thicker than the jungles of home.

"By the Goddess, the Yautja girls are gonna love this place," Smoke said quietly to himself as they began a slight turn following Seeker Dimondscale's lead, suddenly there was a loud screaming noise inside his head as this proximity alarm went crazy and he began looking around to find the source, but before he found it there were loud roars all around them and out of nowhere miniature balls of fire rocketed between them causing Smoke to veer off course as he punched through the thick smoke of one of the trails.

"Holy fucking shit!" Smoke yelled truing to duck his head down inside his armour out of instinct, but it wasn't over yet there were more of the debris missiles and all of the team were dancing about all over the sky as they tried to avoid the storm of micro meteors made from the debris of the destroyed Raptorian ships, they'd picked this area deliberately because a lot of debris had been falling so that they're entry wouldn't be noticed, but obviously, that came with a high degree of risk, now he knew why.

Just like all the members of his team Smoke had activated his cloaking the moment that his wings had deployed to make them a lot harder to spot from the ground, but this also meant that their ballistics shielding was deactivated due to the power drain on their energy cells, it was one or the other so when the small high-speed shrapnel hit the centre of Smoke's left-wing about three quarter's of the way of the wing there was nothing to absorb the force.

The wing sheered off like it had been cut with a blade, "Fuck!" Smoke screamed as suddenly his glide turned into a free fall, Smoke's mind went into full-on panic mode as his world began to spin and became a flicking image of green, blue, green, blue, green, blue steadily getting faster and faster as his remaining wing turned him into a sycamore seed.

Out of nowhere a voice spoke to Smoke, somewhere in the back of his mind, "You have to focus, you have to fix this Smoke, you can do it, keep clam and fix it" it said like warm silk inside his mind, it was like the voice pushed the fear out of his mind if only for the briefest of moments, but at that moment he knew what he had to do.

"Retract wings!" Smoke yelled and the remaining wing shot back into the holder on his back, firing the thrusters in the suit to correct the spin, the ground was getting a whole lot bigger a whole lot faster now, with a pull Liam deployed the wingsuit part of his suit and it was like a giant hand reached up and grabbed him pulling him upwards and threw him like a fucking dart as the downwards vertical momentum was transferred to horizontal motion, his HUD was utterly screaming blue bloody murder that he was way off course, hell in only a few seconds that this had been transpiring for he'd utterly lost sight of his team and thanks to the jamming going on he couldn't even pick up their beacons.

That's when fate decided to be an even bigger cunt and his proximity alarm began to scream yet again, without even seeing the threat Smoke began to weave back and forth trying to avoid the streaks of fire that whistled and fizzed past him at incredible speed, his sensors were showing so many of them that it was like one big mass on his radar, "Ahh FUCK!" Smoke yelled as two about the size of acorns punched holes right his right-wing and set the material on fire for a brief second before the fire-resistant material extinguished itself, but those holes were more than enough to throw his stability to hell and once again he began to spin.

Another hit this time in the web between his legs and now Smoke knew he had no chance of holding it and his altimeter was getting dangerously close to sea level, or in this case big hard fucking tree level, "Jettison glide wings and deploy emergency chute on my mark...MARK!" Smoke yelled.

The glide pack anchored to his back jettisoned from his back and flew upwards before exploding like a firework as the self destruct initiated sending yet more flaming debris in all directions but this time well away from him, two seconds later the emergency parachute that was part of the rig deployed and once again that invisible hand was back only this time it felt like it was stopping him dead and trying to squeeze his stomach out through his arsehole.

The chute itself was clear so that it could be used by a cloaked operative without drawing attention, it was made from a super light and strong polymer and it deployed just in time to break his speed before he went crashing into the branches of the incredibly big trees and while he could feel the branches that were whipping him he felt the impacts of them against his armour while he bounced around inside it like a pea in a tin can.

Noises began to swim lazily through the blackness in Smoke's head, it sounded like birds chirping along with an odd buzzing and bleeping noise, that's when a voice cut through the cascade of sounds leaking into the darkness, "User condition stabilised, deploying emergency protocols" it said and that's when the lightning came.

Every muscle in Smoke's body felt like it was on fire all at the same time, he snapped back into consciousness with an explosive rush of breath and a yell, "User vitals stabilised, consciousness restored, emergency protocols cancelled, beginning system diagnostics" the strangely comforting female voice said before it began to list stats at him.

"User unconscious for three hours twelve minutes due to blunt force trauma, no complications or concussion detected but recommend user please seek the assistance of the nearest Battle Angel as soon as possible, flight interface destroyed and inoperable, both primary and secondary weapons operational, power supply at 98%, atmospheric seals intact, armour integrity at 100%," the voice said in its calming tone and Smoke shook his head to clear any remaining fog from it and that's when he realized the ground felt odd like it wasn't there and he made the mistake of looking down.

"Ahh fucking great! I'm stuck in a fucking tree! Goddess above! Some pauking Hunter I am, if the Grand Matriarch saw me now she'd laugh her pauking chiselled ass off" Smoke grumbled to himself as he swung helplessly from his parachute harness which was caught in the branches of the tree that had caught his fall and now he was dangling like a freedom day decoration from it.

"Ok Smoke you can do this, it's just like any other logic problem, there's always a solution you just have to see it," he said twisting and turning in the harness to look around himself, that's when he saw the branch about ten feet from him and it hit him, so slowly he began to swing back and forth, back and forth stretching out his hands like a toddler learning to walk and reaching for its Matriach, when he got close enough he reached out and slammed both of his wrist blades into it which as it happens was very well timed because above him there was a loud crack.

The branch that had been supporting his weight shot past him with the remnants of his parachute tangled around it and Smoke barely had enough time to cut the lines before it would have dragged him off the tree, "Fuck that was close" Smoke breathed as he looked down at the fallen branch still wrapped in his parachute, straining against gravity Smoke hauled himself up onto the branch and hooked his capped toes onto the bark, it was just as well that all Hunters were just as at home in trees as they were on the ground, it was something their Grand Matriach insisted on teaching them and suddenly Smoke was very glad that she did.

Once his heart rate slowed enough to the point where it didn't feel like it was tapping against the inside of his armour looking for a way out, then slowly he balanced himself before walking along the branch and shinned his way down the trunk to ground level and only now did it hit him, he didn't have a clue where he was but where his team was either, he was so far behind enemy lines that there were no lines and with the comms blackout his team had no way of finding him, nor did they have any way of knowing if he was alive, now he knew that they were as much Clan Mason as he was and they would look for him and not give up they found him, but in a jungle, this big with no way to communicate even as good as hunters as the Yautja were it would take weeks, maybe even months before they found him, for now, he was on his own.

Smoke pulled his weapon free from its harness utterly amazed that it was still with him, his shoulder-mounted casters were still in one piece as well, as was the ECM and Electronic Warfare Kit strapped to his lower back, so then that left his choice of actions as clear, he would hunt for his team but as he did he would try his best to carry out his mission, he would attempt to find a way to crack through the jamming and reestablish contact with either the Clan itself or his team whichever came first, while at the same time he would look for a way to try and locate both the enemy and the Raptorians and as frightened as he was he would remember he was a proud member of Clan Mason and of Tik eleth Mason's Hunters and he would make his Clan and his Grand Matriarch proud of him.

Sweeping around him Smoke saw nothing so he deactivated his cloak and put his back to the tree before sitting down on the jungle floor between the leaf litter and the curious insects which he wasn't worried about as they had no way into his utterly sealed suit, so even the huge black twelve legged spider-like creature that was the size of a Yautja dinner plate that seemed to be watching him curiously from the trunk of a nearby tree didn't worry him that much as he knew this armour could survive a direct hit from a railgun without its shields so a spider as butt ugly as the fucker was, was no worry for him, without it he'd have been back up in the tree again as soon as he'd set eyes on the fucking thing.

He took his tool kit from his belt and opened it in his lap, it was full of a verity of miniaturized tools specialized to his trade and one of those tools that kinda like a little handheld pop up satellite that had a little tripod for it to stand on, when hooked up to his armour it became a frequency scanner and direction finder, it could detect an incredible range of radio frequencies and it measured the strength as it scanned around to give a likely direction for the source, as he hooked it up the little satellite whirred to life and began moving around on its own as it tried to find a frequency to lock onto, it began displaying active frequencies on Smoke's HUD.

Instantly Smoke could see that a broad spectrum transmitter was being used to broadcast static across all frequencies making them unusable, but this scanner allowed Smoke to scan his surroundings and to see in which direction the source of the jamming and interference was coming from by seeing in which direction the signal was strongest, which would hopefully lead him to the source.

It took a couple of minutes to locate the direction in which the signal was strongest, but once it was zeroed in Smoke locked in the direction to his HUD so he didn't get lost following the course, even in the jungles of home it was so easy to get turned around and lost if you were not careful, the Yautja were utter masters of jungle navigation and their Grand Matriarch took great pains to ensure every single one of her Hunters even with no tools could navigate their way through a jungle using things like rivers and various landmarking methods, but thankfully for Smoke all he had to do was follow the glowing marker on his HUD which he'd tagged to the rough distance and direction of this signal being broadcast across the planet.

Once he had a direction in which to head Smoke packed up his gear again and activated his low light enhancement which was a low power version of the night vision his suit was equipped with, it made use of the ambient light and enhanced it but unlike full night vision it wouldn't blind you or overload if you encountered a light source, this was taken directly from a Yautja hunting mask as they had a lot of visual spectrum's available to allow you to see no matter the circumstance.

The Hunter armour had a helmet that was shaped like it's wear's head with a metal faceplate and the Yautja version looked remarkably like a Yautja hunting mask except for a version that fully sealed their head and dreads inside it as well.

A sudden high pitched chittering noise made Smoke spin around on the spot pulling his weapon into the shoulder and grip it tightly as he cycled through his visual options switching to thermal but other than a small smattering of little hot splodges in the canopy which was most likely a few birds, he felt his heart hammering against his chest plate again as the noise most certainly did not sound like birds, more like teeth being clicked together rapidly.

Smoke reactivated his cloaking systems and with a few last nervous glances around himself into the gloom which now had a green tinge as his enhanced vision was lighting it up, but with nothing jumping out at him he took a final breath and steeled his nerves before setting off following the marker.

Despite being a Hunter, Smoke was very much an indoor kind of boy, being an Electronic Warefare expert most of his job involved sitting at a computer and breaking codes, or coming up with new uses for the incredibly complicated tools that flowed out of Yoshi and Citrus's hive across his desk, none of that generally involved dragging your arse through hot dirty jungles, which was a point that was hammered home to him as for the fifth time in an hour he tripped over a hidden tree root that was like a living tripwire hidden in the leaf litter of the jungle floor, but unlike one of the ever graceful Seekers or the vast majority of his gold suited Hunter brethren, Smoke didn't perform a graceful recovery and land on his feet with a show of acrobatic prowess, he simply face planted into the leaf litter sending a spray of mud and leaf fragments in all directions with a dull thump.

Swearing to himself in three different languages Smoke went to pick himself from the leaf litter he heard something that made him freeze solid, voices were drifting lazily through the haze of the jungle and they most definitely were not Clan voices.

As panic began to cloud his thought and his heart began to bang against his chest plates Smoke very slowly lifted his head and instantly movement caught his eye between the trees ahead, he froze solid and simply watched as slowly a group of figures began to move into view and he instantly recognised the shape of Scalathor soldiers, he'd seen the helmet cam footage from the attack on the Serpentinus homeworld so he knew what to do and what their tactics would be, it had been shared among all the military wings of the Clan.

They were moving slowly towards him and he barely had enough time to move to cover against the trunk of a large tree and combined with his cloak he blended right in with the bark as they drew alongside him, there were about twenty of them, by the shape of them obviously all females.

"Why the hell are we working with the fucking Draconis! Why has the Dark Seed placed any faith in those winged idiots? We should have conquered them first!" he heard one soldier hiss to her companion nearby.

"Who knows? All I know is you don't want to be throwing around statements like that anywhere near those fucking Nightmare Assassins, they'll kill you where you stand, skin you and stick outside the base with a pole up your cunt before you even know you're fucking dead, so I'd keep that kind of shit to yourself" her companion hissed back.

The Scalathor soldiers were dressed in skin-tight black combat stealth suits that made them difficult to see in the shadows of the jungle trees and foliage, they were covered in pouches containing chat looked like canisters and each was wearing a backpack with obviously a few days worth of supplies, they all seemed to be armed with some kind of plasma projection weapon by all the bulbous canisters attached to them.

The first Scalathor snorted and nodded, "Yeah those girls are fucking scary, one of them looked at me the other day and I swear it felt like my blood turned to ice, felt like she was looking through my soul like it was a fucking filing cabinet, but the lucky bitches get the pick of the fucking males, saw one of them dragging four of the comfort males off to her quarters the other night, if any of us tried that we'd get fucking flogged, hell we're lucky if we get to brush against them as they walk fucking passed" she said grumpily.

"Ain't that the truth but it ain't our place to question them, they're the voices of the Dark Seed and I've seen enough of what that thing can do and its enough to know that I don't ever want to be on its bad side, remember what happened to that town up in the northern territory where all the girls refused to acknowledge the right of the Dark Seed to rule, the one where they stuck to the teachings of the so-called Great Tree?" the second one said causing the first one to visibly shivered in disgust and the second one nodded knowingly.

"Yeah that was just two Nightmare Assassins, fifty thousand civilians gone, just like that, like a living bomb went off, males and children as well, not a soul left standing just a pile of skinned corpses, they said you could see the pile and smell the burning scales for hundreds of miles around," she said snapping her fingers just for emphasis of how quick they had all died and with that, the team drew out of earshot but that little impromptu eavesdropping session had revealed a rather interesting nugget of intel, it appeared that essentially the Dark Seed was ruling the Scalathor and the Draconis through force, like a dictator exterminating their own people for daring to speak out against them, but also that there seemed to be pockets of resistance, this could be useful information for his Grand Patriarch and Matriarch.

But once the threat was passed Smoke blew out the breath he'd been holding and detached himself from the tree that he'd been hugging like an over amorous Praetorian, with one last look in the direction of the soldiers he made a not on his digital map where he'd seen them and what direction they were going in along with their number before he carried on his journey through the jungle, but it wasn't long before he reached something that stopped him dead in his tracks and a realisation hit him like a cold hard slap, he next to no chance of getting anywhere near the signal's source.

Smoke crouched down on the large rocky outcrop that overlooked the dense jungle below him and all around him and what he saw before he made his mouth simply drop open, in the distance, there was a large clearing that seemed to have branches running out from it in all directions that were most likely rivers that ran like veins through the jungle around it leading to this clearing like it was a giant heart feeding life to all the green around it, but it what was in this absolutely massive clearing that caught his attention.

Sat smack in the centre of this clearing was what appeared to a huge FOB or Forward Operating Base, it looked like some sort of pop up base sat on huge stilts, a large metallic square that stuck out from the landscape like a sore thumb, at each corner of it was a large heavily armed guard towers, which he deduced from the multitude of what appeared to be gun barrels sticking out from them like spikes, connecting those guard towers were twenty-foot high wall segments made from solid metal panels, they looked like they had been slotted into place most likely with a shuttle of some kind, like giant slats into a box frame.

Sat directly at the centre of this pop-up brace was a huge antenna that was covered in small satellite dishes and whip aerials pointing in all directions, this synced up with his HUD marker telling him that this was indeed the source of the jamming frequency that he was hunting, but the problem was what was surrounding it, because not only was it surrounded by the twenty-foot plus high walls and the guard towers, but parked all around the place with buildings dotted about in-between them were what appeared to be tanks, lots and lots of tanks.

They were lined up in lots of little squares of eight, there had to be at least two hundred of them, the place appeared to be the temporary home to an entire armoured division and that was before he took into count the sheer amount of soldiers that would be stationed there, in short, there was no fucking way he was getting in there alone even with his cloaking tech, the confines were too close quarters, it would only take one person to bump him as he made his way through and he'd be toast armour or no armour, this was going to need some very creative planning.

"Ahh for fuck sake this just got a lot harder, why couldn't it have just been a big arsed satellite dish just sat on a rock somewhere with no guards?" Smoke said forlornly to himself sitting himself down on the grassy clifftop looking out over the base, he was going to need some serious help here and a serious plan to go with it, so Smoke decided to do what he did best, think.