Desert Treasure

[t0l]

He’d never been this wrong in his entire life.

Miles and miles of endless desert passed under his vehicle, with a bored Tal trying his best not to collapse behind the wheel. With no end to their patrol in sight, he was seriously starting to reconsider his life choices again, now for the third time in four weeks.

It wasn’t even Hawken waking him up at 4 in the morning that had pissed him off, nor was it the six hour-long weapons installation process. Installing a weapon, in his case a heavy pulse laser, on his vehicle had actually been a fairly easy task, even though his fellow squadmates hadn’t the slightest clue what to do.

“Hey Tal, I need your help!” one of them had asked, “How do I install this part of the ring mount?” How the hell was he supposed to know? He just drove the damn thing around.

He’d even gotten lucky as Core logistics hadn’t been as kind to some of the other squads, especially now with a severed supply line that wouldn’t facilitate the flow of spare parts or more weapons and ammunition. One particularly unlucky unit had been stuck without heavier weapons, resulting in them having to strap two or three rifles together and onto their issued ring mount.

No, it was the fact that, despite their fearless new leader’s “aggressive” stance on a presumed Corsair presence on the planet, he was doing the exact same stuff, aimlessly combing tracts of desert for any signs of life, just now he had his gunner’s legs in his rear-view mirror.

“Boogeyman 2-1, sitrep!”

He was so sick of Hawken spazzing out on their radio, too, and they hadn’t even been out for an hour.

“Boogeyman 2-1, I say again, sitrep! Please respond, over!”

Her vehicle was directly behind his. What could they have possibly seen that she didn’t? Tal looked over to his right to stare his squadmate in the eye for a few seconds, before the man gave him a quick nod.

“Boogeyman 2-1, respond immediately!”

[redacted]

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