The Treasure of Lei Fong Wu

Chapter Forty-Four

ALPHA TEAM: -68:21

Zoe nodded emphatically that she was ready, and as soon as she was certain that everyone was lying perfectly still on the deck, she laid down, her shotgun in her lap.

Motion seekers were among the nastiest of aerial mines. They had been used for hundreds of years, one of the more annoying of the long list of anti-infantry munitions. She’d first encountered them the first year of the war, when she was part of the Browncoat regiment that took Camp Bonewitz on Boros. It was only a supply depot and support base, but it was full of purplebellied Feds who were freaking out because of the revolution that was happening around them. They were scared and trigger happy, and they had whole warehouses full of munitions at their disposal.

Which is why they needed to capture the base intact. That had been her first night op, her first infiltration, and the first time she had cut a man’s throat without making a sound. It was also her first time with aerial mines.

They operated just like any other mine, laying quietly in one place and looking inconspicuous. When they were triggered by proximity, however, they didn’t just explode – any dumb mine could do that. They instead launched a tiny machine into the air that leaped up to the height of a man’s head and did any number of things. Spin wildly while releasing carbon monofilament and decapitating anything in range. Home in on the sound of your boots, or the heat of your body, fly in aggressively and explode. Sometimes the explosions were pure concussion, enough to knock you flat. Sometimes they were shrapnel, sometimes they were filament darts or napalm or acid or other, even nastier things.

This one, she felt, rather than knew, was a Motion Seeker. Move faster than an inch a second and the little metal bird that would sprout out of the door would find you and explode a shaped charge designed to crush your ribcage and liquefy your internal organs with the blast.

“Everyone ready?” she