The Peltasts followed Zach from a safe distance, careful to avoid detection from the n he was leading away. Zach already knew exactly where to take them.
He stopped beneath a foothill, an elevated position on the outskirts of the city. Close enough to monitor the foundry, but far enough to remain unseen.
More importantly, it sat between the foundry and Elysium, making it a natural point of control over the surrounding terrain.
The approach wasn’t rushed. Zach slowly and cautiously raised his fist, and the n behind him halted instantly.
One by one, they stood up from their snowmobiles and across from Zach. Their eyes scanned the treeline, rifles tracked likely avenues of approach, and for a brief mont the world seed to hold its breath alongside them.
The Peltasts had circled off to the other side of the hill and advanced up the slope in staggered formation, boots pressing carefully into the snow to minimize noise. The incline worked in their favor.
The n from below were unknowingly exposed by the Peltasts hidden in the trees. Zach’s second-in-command wasted no ti.
He dropped to a knee, pulling a compact drone from his pack and setting it on the snow. A quick systems check, a flick of a switch, and the rotors spun to life with a low, controlled hum.
The drone lifted smoothly into the air, climbing past the treeline before stabilizing high above the canopy.
From that height, it could see everything, movent, light, heat signatures when needed, and more importantly, it could hear everything the radios that the world below could not.
While the drone ascended, the rest of the team got to work.
Two of them moved to a marked on their personal end user devices just beneath the crest, brushing aside a thin layer of snow that had settled unevenly compared to the rest of the ground.
It was subtle, almost imperceptible to an untrained eye, but they knew exactly what to look for.
Entrenching tools ca out next. It took ti to dig up, but not as much as it would have for anyone else. This wasn’t the first ti they had done this.
Eventually, tal scraped against sothing solid.
They cleared the remaining dirt away to reveal a sealed container; weatherproofed, reinforced, and buried deep enough to survive both the elents and casual discovery.
One of the n cracked it open, exhaling slowly as the contents were revealed. Inside was exactly what they needed.
A compact relay unit. Battery packs wrapped in insulation. A reinforced antenna. Spare wiring. A field repeater assembled in modular components, ready to be deployed at a mont’s notice.
Everything had been prepared weeks in advance, placed here during one of their earlier patrols in anticipation of exactly this kind of operation.
The team worked quickly but thodically.
"Relay is live," one of them muttered under his breath.
Up above, the drone adjusted its position slightly, maintaining a stable hover as it synced with the ground unit.
What had once been a dead space between terrain obstacles was now bridged by two layers of coverage, one anchored to the earth, the other floating silently in the sky.
Within minutes, the system was fully operational.
The hilltop relay boosted their signal across the broken terrain, pushing it beyond the natural limitations of their handheld radios.
At the sa ti, the drone, now acting as an airborne repeater, extended their line of sight even further, bypassing obstructions that would have otherwise cut them off entirely.
The effect was imdiate.
Static that had once filled their channels faded into clarity. Broken transmissions smoothed out into coherent signals. What had been fragnts of communication beca whole again.
For the first ti since entering deep patrol range, they had a clear and stable connection back to Elysium.
The drone operator reached up, pressing two fingers against the side of his headset as he tested the line. He didn’t speak imdiately, he listened first.
Only after he confird the channel was open did he allow himself a small nod.
The n below didn’t know about the relay, they didn’t know about the drone, they didn’t know how many rifles were still trained on them from unseen positions along the ridge.
They only knew that this "kid" had led them sowhere safer. What they didn’t realize... Was that they had been under control from the mont Zach chose not to pull the trigger.
Zach pulled his balaclava and his ballistic visor up. He showed off his face, which no matter how the n looked at it, they thought was too young to be a soldier.
Timothy stepped forward, his rifle slung around his chest, and he didn’t make any aggressive moves. But his voice was stern, loud, and filled with resentnt.
"You brought us all the way out here... So what is your plan exactly? Why did you stop ?"
The man’s friends pulled him back and silently shook their heads at them. Then another stepped forward and introduced himself.
"My na is Don, these are my friends: Timothy, Hank, and Dale. Those bandits have taken so of our loved ones and are holding them ransom. They’ve taken a lot of the loved ones of people like us. And we’re just trying to get them back.... You look a little young to be a soldier. Can I ask your na?"
Zach didn’t speak, not at first, he examined the n, the weathered lines of their faces, the shape of their cheekbones and how pronounced they were.
There was one thing that was certain to him. They were well fed... well fed in an ice age. That was a rarity outside Elysium. They might be a bit on the older side, if Zach had to guess these n were in their late thirties and early to mid-forties.
But that was normal and world like this, where the cold took young, old, and those in the pri of their lives all the sa.
Zach’s unmoving and stalwart expression unnerved so of the n, that is until he spoke.
"You can call Perseus, and I’m not a soldier... I’m a peltast."
None of the n here were educated enough on Greek Mythology, or the ancient Greek military structure to truly understand the depths of this assertion. They just thought it was a strange comnt.
The man nad Don was about to step forward when Zach stopped him. He slowly raised his hand and motioned with his eyes towards his feet.
"Stay right there, we’re not friends... At least not yet... You say those barbarians took your loved ones in exchange for ransom... Is whatever community you’re from supplying them to keep the hostages alive and safe?"
Don looked over at the other n, they silently conveyed sothing hidden beneath their gaze. But Zach saw it all the sa.
"Yes... You guessed correctly, our ransom is paid in food, clean water, and fuel. If we have munitions, they’ll accept those as well, and dical supplies are worth a king’s ransom. Enough to buy back a loved one in full."
This was an important piece of information that Zach and all of Elysium had been missing. He had often thought about it while watching the Bandits go in and out of their hideout for the last few weeks.
They always ca back with more supplies, and sotis more captives. But from his perspective, by now every building worth scavenging was already plundered, and there shouldn’t be so many survivors for them to attack day in and day out.
Realistically, if they were attacking locations and plundering them for all their worth like Lorenzo and his gang had done, there would be nobody left by now, other than Elysium to attack.
But it all made sense now... And Zach let the idea slip from his lips in cold realization.
"They’re operating on an extraction based economy...."
The mont the n heard this, they suddenly beca twitchy. They couldn’t explain it but the way Zach had said those words... It was so sterile... So void of sympathy or human emotion that it sent chills down their spines.
Don raised his hands, trying to keep things calm as he noticed his n were spooked by Zach’s epiphany.
"Whatever you’re thinking, I promise you we’re not allied with those bastards... We’re just trying to survive, just like you, and everyone else in this frozen wasteland, right, guys?"
His eyes had already shifted. Not to Don, but past him. Timothy’s shoulder twitched. His weight shifted slightly to one side. The kind of movent that ant a decision had already been made.
*bang* *bang* *bang*
The rapid gunshots echoed throughout the area faster than anyone could react. Blood spattered across Don’s face as he realized Timothy’s body fell to the ground.
Then he looked to his other side and found the other n’s bodies collapsing lifelessly into the snow.
The blood spilling from their wounds and into the snow, carving its way through the white powder like a knife through butter.
By the ti Don realized it, he was all alone, and Zach was pointing his rifle at him. Don hadn’t moved, he hadn’t reached, or even flinched.
But even so, there wasn’t the slightest trace of emotion in Zach’s voice as he spoke the final words that Don would ever hear.
"Your friend really shouldn’t have reached for his weapon..."
*bang*
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