Ocerrlix Designs

Night Watch

Prologue

The wind whistled through the pine trees sending a cold chill through the man’s heavy grey coat. He shrugged some fallen snow off his shoulders and lowered his scarf to take a sip from a cup.  His scraggly dark brown beard revealed he had been in the field for some time.  He breathed a heavy sigh, his breath visible in the dark blue night sky.  His shoulder epaulets revealed his rank, sergeant.  He looked up at the night sky and counted the slowly moving dots.  A noise disturbed his silent thought and he grabbed up his rifle dropping his half empty cup. He cocked the rifle and brushed the snow off it with a gloved hand.  Silently he left his perch and quietly knelt behind a conveniently placed storage box.
The soldier was visible through the sniper’s thermal sights a warm green glow in the centre of a black sea.   The sniper eased his finger against the trigger.  She began to steady her breathing, preparing to dispatch this seemingly lone soldier.  She heard a crunch in the snow and turned to find the barrel of an assault rifle.  There was a flash and her warm body fell dead into the snow.
The dark figure picked up her rifle.  His dark grey coat revealed him to be a member of the same group as the other soldier.  He slung the sniper rifle over his shoulder and began the slow walk down the snow covered hill side, the sergeant a small grey dot in the white country side.
A cold fifteen minutes brought him to the sergeant’s camp.
“Sergeant Swanson?”  The man asked.
“Who’s asking?” Swanson inquired suspiciously.
“Corporal Nathan Walker, Navy Intelligence.”
“Yaa found me Corporal, what can I do for you?”  Swanson bent and picked up his cup, the white snow turned brown from his spilt coffee.  With a sigh he dropped the cup back into the snow.
“How soon can you be packed and moving?”  Walker looked around the little camp; there was a pair of long rectangular steel crates in the centre.  Off to the side was a small trolley for moving the containers and a small quinsy was dug up around the base of a particularly large red pine.
“Here, just give me a second, I’m not even going to bother asking why.”   Swanson hauled the two crates on top of the trolley and flicked a small switch on its frame near the handle.  The Trolley was a flat bed with a small propulsion system which allowed it to hover effortlessly over the snowy ground.  He went to his quinsy and crawled in.  He emerged several minutes later with his personal effects, which he dumped into one of the crates, the other crate contained munitions and other toys of war.  “There, ready to go…”  He paused, and then grabbed a small spherical device from his leather satchel.  He turned the top half of the sphere and tossed it into the entrance of his quinsy and covered his ears.  A small muffled thud sounded and his home collapsed on itself.  “Now I’m ready to go.”  Swanson pulled his trolley to the corporal.
“I hope you’re ready for a walk, sir.”
“We’ve got all night Corporal.”