Chapter 1
Esamir
Andvari Dropship Center
Halbrad shivered in the as the bitter wind once again swept through his concealed position on the mountain-side. This was why he hated missions on cold continents, while providing protection from enemy bullets, his agile armor suit did nothing to protect him from the bitter cold of Esamir. He made a note in the back of his head to ask why his armor, with all its technology, could not include a simple temperature regulator. This bleak continent was home to both New Conglomerate and Vanu Sovereignty sanctuary warpgates, yet the continent showed no signs of any battles taking place, a very unusual situation indeed when the continent bases were evenly split between the two empires. He shook these thoughts from his head as these concerns were of no consequence to his mission and he did not need to be distracted by the mindless wandering of his brain. He pulled up the picture of his target, a commander by the name of Bigdig for the 40th time, an unnecessary action as the image was burned into his brain after three hours of waiting.
Movement in the Andvari courtyard caught his eye and he brought the powerful scope of his bolt driver to bear on the flurry of activity. He saw a man with the uniform of someone with yellow uniform of Battle Rank 20 and Command Rank 5, but was unable to see his face, which was shielded by his reinforced exosuit�s helmet. Halbrad cursed under his breath, as he did not want to alert the enemy to his position by eliminating the wrong target, yet was under orders not to let his target leave the facility alive. He cursed again as he realized that noone was going to salute him, which would have been the sign that the man he was looking at was the commander of all the New Conglomerate forces on this continent. The commander must have briefed his soldiers that saluting a superior officer was a death warrant if any snipers were watching. Then his luck changed, as a private in the customary blue uniform of a new recruit to the traitorous empire went rigid in unparalleled fear and saluted as the commander walked by. Halbrad smiled as the commander went ballistic on the private and nervously glanced around at the surrounding mountains. That was his cue to fire. The crack of his rifle stood out against the stark silence of the mountain as the customized single shot bolt flew from the long barrel of his bolt driver straight into the head of the unsuspecting commander. The unique bolt delivered a single-shot kill to any non-MAX target and was only given to those snipers who were assigned to eliminate specific targets. Halbrad confirmed that his target was down and put his rifle on his back. In any other situation Bigdig could have just respawned at the nearest spawn tube, but earlier in the day a spy in the New Conglomerate ranks had hacked into the spawning computers and removed his matrix from all tubes in Auraxis. The commander was dead.
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2004-02-05, 11:51 PM
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