The Dark Edge Chronicles - Clan War

Hunting the Hand

Abruptly he snapped his fingers, the sound muted by his tactical gloves.

"More importantly, if there's a cam in there transmitting..." Tusk began.

"We might be able to hack the signal and do a trace," Lash interjected to finish for him, a smile touching his lips beneath his tactical balaclava and facial armor. Satisfied with the direction they were going in if only for the moment, he eased back into a ready crouch.

"Do we have the gear for that?"

"Kren does," Truk replied before looking at one of the other two vampires. "Kren?"

Nodding, the addressed nestari quickly fished a communication jammer out of a utility pouch, a rectangular box that looked like an old school police scanner but with a built-in GPS and touch-screen interface to help locate nearby signals. A moment to set it up then he was scanning across the signals emanating from the attacking column.

"Lots of idle chatter," he reported, eyes focused on the jammer's readout. "Mostly local, a couple of spotters in helicopters nearby... Wait! I've got something. An encrypted video signal coming from somewhere close to the front of the column."

"That's our cameraman," Truk said with a confident nod. "Can you break the encryption?"

"Working on it," Kren replied even as his hands darted over the device's touch-screen interface. "I'm also piping the signal back to Narcist in the comms shack. She'll have better equipment to do the crack and trace there if I can't do it with this handheld."

"Watch for a spike in the bandwidth," Lash directed. "That'll indicate the camera is ready to transmit, which will likely signal the beginning of the final push."

"Right," Truk said with an agreeing nod. "Nice catch, Wolf." He turned back to the other two vampires. "We'll give the watcher a couple of minutes of video then blow the column and let them watch their assets burn!"

The hunter's surge in Lash's veins was almost too much to bear as they hunkered back down to wait for the bandwidth spike to happen. It was like he was an actual wolf watching a herd of deer, not twenty paces from where he hid in the trees. He could anticipate the taste of blood in his mouth so vividly, he was salivating.

Then a soft 'beep' was sending adrenalin flooding through him like a tidal wave of cold fire.

"The camera is transmitting," Kren quietly reported, confirming that battle was about to commence.

That was more than enough to get Lash up out of his crouch, his weapon slung behind him as he readied his karambit. Then he was slipping out of cover and heading directly for the nearest Hand position.

"Wolf!" Truk hissed into his ear via his comms. "What are you doing?"

"Hunting," Lash tersely replied before pulling his earpiece free and sliding into the darkness.

In full stealth mode as soon as he was out of his crouch, it didn't take the big vampire long to close the distance between their hiding spot in the trees and the Hand position. He was around the squat bulk of the tank and on its handful of guards before they could even react.

The first got his neck snapped, a quick grab of the head with powerful hands before twisting enough to break bones then dropping the abruptly limp body to the ground. The next got the karambit in the neck as she began to turn in response to hearing her comrade's body hit the ground. A quick slice and warm blood was spurting out of not only her severed carotid but her mouth as well, choking her cry of alarm before she could even make it.