The soft moans of the dying could be heard, as Lt Frank lead his small team of Marines down the steep slope. The pitch black darkness illuminated slightly by the twin waning moons allowed Frank and his team, wearing night vision goggles to pick their way softly and slowly along the treacherous slopes.
Franks' team detoured around the battlefield via the slopes, ignoring the dying Empire soldiers. UAV reconnaissance had spotted several heat signatures at various parts of the path, most likely are Empire's sentries and scouts.
The only way to avoid getting spotted even in this dark night is to travel along the slopes, using them as cover. The Goldie commander thought that they are crazy to attempt such a thing but agreed to support Frank and his team as much as possible.
The lead Marine, Pvt Koing after reaching the point where they plan to rappel down to the foot of the mountain, aims a blocky pistol at the wall. A dull thud and a puff of super compressed air, and a hardened steel stake punched into the rock firmly. Koing than attaches a belay device and rope to it before giving it a good tug to test.
He turns a gives his team of three a thumbs up and hooks up his harness to the ropes and device. Once ready, Frank gave him a nod and started to rappel down the slope as softly as possible.
Frank watched Koing descend down into the darkness, even with his night vision which turns everything into a green shade. The little moonlight given off by the moons make visibility is tough, granting them less than a hundred meters of vision.
A double tap from the comms signaled to Frank that Koing had reached the bottom, he pats Lcp Cooper on his shoulder, indicting him to go down. A soft jingle and another dark shadow disappeared down the slope.
"There," Frank whispered, "Last known location of the retreating blue boys." He points towards a massive bluewood tree. "UAV spotted them heading in that direction earlier."
"Go silence, avoid contact." Frank instructed, "Lethal force as last resort. Clear?"
The other two nods. "Dog Actual, to Sierra, proceeding into mission area. Cover our asses, over."
A double tap in the comms replied to Frank's message. He waves his team forward into the dark looming forest.
Traveling into the forest, they found a large number of tracks caused by the matching boots of the Empire's soldiers, allowing them to follow their path easily. Once in a while they crawled and detour around sentries hidden in the trees. Frank updated his tactical map on each sentry location each time one is encountered.
The thick canopy blocked all light from stars to the moons from penetrating into the forest, limiting the viewing distance of their night vision to less than 40 meters. Finally, after almost an hour of sneaking around in the forest, they spotted a glow from the distance.
The trees opened up to a large field, the sky still covered by the outstretching branches of the trees, providing a natural ceiling, sheltering the Empire camp from the weather. Hundreds of tents spread out among the trees, lit by burning braziers set twos by twos.
Dozens of cookfire, with blue coated soldiers sitting around, could be seen and drifts of conversation could be heard from the camp. Frank and his team, lowered their night vision sensitivity, allowing them to see almost as bright as day. "There," Cooper whispered. He points to an extravagant tent set in the middle of the camp, where dozens of banners were propped up around it.
Frank nods, and using the zoom function of his goggles, observed the tent. "Looks like their head honcho." He continues to observe a while before satisfied and gave his next instructions. "Let's fall back some distance. Copper, set up the laser spotter, Koing go up that tree there and deploy the transmitter."
Both men nodded and started they pull back till a safe distance while keeping a line of sight to the tent. Copper removed a laser spotter from his back and hit among the tree roots, sighting in with the binocular looking device, targetting the extravagant tent in the middle.
Koing with the help of Frank boosted himself up the tree branches and slowly and as quietly as he could, climbed up the branches one by one, while Frank kept watch, holding one end of a cable.
Finally a couple of tugs from the cable, Frank hands it over to Copper who plugged it into the spotter. A short while later, a
Appeared on the spotter screen. "Incoming!" Cooper whispered loudly, and Frank jerked the cable several times to warn Konig. As they were less than 600 meters away from the strike zone, they quickly braced themselves against the tree, covering their ears and opening their mouths.