The Dark Edge Chronicles - Clan War

Insertion

The entrance into what appeared to be a small hanger or large storage area was, thankfully, unlocked. And, after the blinding light of day, mercifully dark.

Flipping up his polarized goggles and going to night vision, Lash slowly scanned the space within. And in doing so, he quickly found the two transport trucks sitting near the far door, a pair of humans, unmistakable with their hot IR signature in his night vision, standing in front of them.

"Commander," one called out softly, his vampiric colored by an Irish locution. "Lady van Tallert's contact told us to expect you." Then the two of them were kneeling down and tilting their heads to the side to bear their necks in the universally accepted gesture of passive offering that the familiars' sub-culture had.

"Thank the Dark Father," one of the vampires Truk had picked, muttered. "I'm famished!"

Apparently that was a common sensation as, moving as a single group, the soldiers dropped their weapons from ready and began towards the two familiars, their hunger exaggerated by having to operate in the daytime. Even the normally stoic Lash, well-trained in suppressing his blood thirst in combat situations, felt a rumble twist his belly at the sight. However, he didn't move.

'No,' he silently mused as he stared hard at the two apparently vulnerable familiars. 'This is too easy." Weapon still at the ready, he looked up at the roof several meters up, his warrior's instincts howling in the back of his mind. 'Something doesn't feel right here.'

"Hold your positions," he growled even as Truk and Anna began forward, equally intent on taking a drink from the offered necks. It was interesting to note that, out of all the Ventru soldiers, only Narcist along with Lash hadn't moved, the warrior tech keeping her weapon trained on the two familiars.

In tribute to their training as Ventru nestari, the soldiers jerked to a halt at the order, Truk and Anna both going further by looking questioningly over their shoulders back at the grim vampire who had growled the command. That was when the two familiars suddenly leapt to their feet, machine pistols in hand, to open fire at the team.

Lash grunted as several rounds caromed off his body armor. Then he and Narcist were returning fire, cutting the familiars down where they stood in a hail of high-velocity rounds. But it didn't end there.

Even as he and the tech opened fire, sniper fire from hidden positions near the roof sliced down through the darkness to hammer into several stunned team members, including Anna, striking with enough hitting power to drop them onto the ground, body armor notwithstanding.

"Snipers!" the Wolf of Frankfurt snarled even as he dropped to one knee to reduce his profile and angled his weapon towards the roof.

"Take cover!" Truk barked, rolling back to one knee from where a sniper bullet had dropped him as well. Bringing his rifle back up to sight at the roof, he began to look for heat signatures even as additional weapons fire from the shadows rained down on them from every angle.

"We're easy prey out here, Wolf."

"Copy that," Lash snarled as he took a sniper bullet off the shoulder. A quick look yielded that over half the team was down on the ground, some even unconscious.

"We need to move."

"The trucks?"

"Affirmative." Then he was opening fire at a movement he barely caught against the greater darkness of the shadows that were making the roof their home. "Lead 'em out, Truk."

"On it," the veteran nestari commander replied, firing up at the roof as well. "Ventru, on me!" Then he was crabbing forward, alternating his fire with a careful forward motion, moving as quickly as the situation would allow.