Seeing how well Gabs and Fleex took to leading their group through the dark confines of the tunnels, Marcus decided the goblins were the undisputed lord of the underground. Their eyes were well adjusted to see well with little light, and their sharp noses were able to sniff out fresh air drafting through cracks in the ground. They could even differentiate which holes dug by the underground dwelling Malifs contained one waiting in ambush over another, which was empty.

Marcus had to say goodbye to the sweet scent of fresh air against the stale tunnel air. Ahead of him was Gabs, crouched ahead using his natural night vision to see his way, and he followed along as they led their way into the underground. Despite wanting to use the extensive tunnels dug underneath the city, Marcus opted to use the surface in case they were tracked.

They couldn’t afford to give anyone able to follow them a route towards their current base, and so he decided to use overland routes and randomly changed directions to lose any player that might be tailing them. It was an overly cautious move, but the SRT had already proven their cunning by almost surrounding Marcus and his team. They were lucky to get out of that situation in the first place.

After that, they arrived at an area Marcus had been familiar with and used the tunnels leading underground there to make their way back to the Songbird station.

His mind naturally drifted to the events prior. He had to give it to the SRT. Their response time was on the clock. If they were a minute too late pulling out of the location, then they would have been surrounded and taken out. Still, he couldn’t complain too much, as the raid turned out to be a success, even with Razer being left behind to buy them precious time. ‘Not that he bought them that much given that he was taken out quickly afterwards, but it’s the thought that counts,’ Marcus thought to himself.

The SRT’s quick reaction force was the linchpin during that fight. If not for its existence, then they would have completely taken out the building and hold it for themselves long enough for the TAS to decide what to do with it. If not for the QRF, then they would have taken ground, which is much more valuable in the strategic sense than taking out a sniper and his security, even if you add the loot gathered on top of that.

Still, with the SRT’s equipment superiority, he would have to develop his own method of defeating a more powerful enemy using inferior equipment and numbers at his disposal. This left Marcus to think about insurgent tactics. Save for a few occasions, insurgents rarely take ground and keep it. Instead, they focus on dealing as much damage against the enemy and, if time allowed, steal equipment before fading into the background.

Despite how much Marcus despised terrorists, he would have to think like them and keep the nature of their thinking in the forefront of his own. Also, this being a game brought with it tradeoffs, mainly respawns. It allows players to learn lessons even in death, as any sensible player would try to recall as much as he could from his previous engagement and gather as much lessons from it instead of just raging out. Those raging salty players Marcus could easily deal with, but those players tend to be the grunts of any group and not the one to make the decisions.

Thinking back to the insurgent strategy, theirs hinged heavily on convincing their superior enemy that continuing the fight was far from worth it. This pushed Marcus back into the brutal and crude strategy of attrition, not in terms of lives, as respawns removed that, but equipment and resources. No fighting group could keep fighting without weapons and the logistics that allowed them to keep in the fight, and no player likes to lose loot. If he could keep the SRT to have a net loss on their resources and equipment, then the leadership of the group would be harder pressed on convincing their players to keep in the fight.

Marcus chuckled, it was like how his brother said when he played a game called ‘Rust’, you don’t win by killing the enemy or destroying their base, you win when you make them quit.

Gabs dropped into a room up ahead and Marcus followed and found himself in a familiar place. Moist, barely lit concrete walls made up the sparse room with a metal door sealing the entrance ahead of them. There was a peephole welded onto the door, 4 feet off the floor. The door was locked on the other side and after a minute after banging on the door, the peephole opened with a goblin on the other side and closed.

For a second, Marcus felt a tinge of fear of getting killed by his own. With the tight confines of the room leaving no place for cover, it would only take a grenade, or a Molotov cocktail, dropped inside the room to take out anyone inside. They could even drop more to make sure that everyone died on this killbox.

Of course, they could try to retreat back into the hole, but the tunnel leading out only allowed a single crouched man or woman at a time and crawling back into it would take more time than the fuze of a grenade, or a lot Molotov to break against the concrete floor and shower them with burning fuel.

Thankfully, the distinct clicking of latches sounded on the other side, followed by a low groan as the metal door swung open. They were met with a group of goblins armed with their usual handmade weapons and Marcus noticed the distinct top feeding magazine of his and Bo’s design. It’s reliability still had to stand the test of battle, but if a goblin was armed in the outer lines, then their gunsmiths would have managed to get them to work at least.

“Appreciate it.” Marcus muttered. The goblins nodded back. He led the way, with everyone trailing behind.

Leaving the deathtrap, Marcus glanced at the fresh welds on the door. Bo had been working hard on the defense and something as simple as compartmentalizing spaces and making chokepoints. Even with superior numbers and equipment, it would be hell to attack a well-defended underground location. There was a reason militaries around the world employed bunker busters back in his time, the largest being having a nuclear payload that could take out underground bases kilometers in the ground.

They knew that attacking a place like this was just not worth it. Better to put a bomb in it and just bury them under the rubble.

With Bo busy fortifying the station and making it as hard to crack as possible, it was Marcus’ to have a bite of their own. No one ever won a war by defending, and there was a reason soldiers back then were given a spear along with a shield.

This brought Marcus back to thinking about their offensive capabilities. The Honest Scribes had proven themselves capable of conducting operations well. Marcus even felt a tinge of jealousy on their cohesion as they worked well during the attack and their coordination with giving information and slowing the QRF down during their retreat was invaluable.

He had to be honest. Marcus wanted something like that as his own. This meant building up his own mercenary company. Gabs and Fleex were a good start. They followed orders and were well disciplined enough not to break during stressful situations. Their marksmanship would have to be heavily worked on. Marcus suspected they simply aimed and fired in the general direction of the enemy and not even landed a single shot within a foot of the target. They haven’t done the Afgani shitter yet, which was good. Still, going back to their marksmanship, it could be worked on given enough time and resources, but discipline was not something that could be developed by simply throwing money at it.

This brought Marcus to his core tenets on running his company. He made sure to write it down with discipline, loyalty, and morale at the top, followed by marksmanship, and finally numbers. Two of the most badass NPCs under his employ would not be able to do much, as they could easily be swamped by players or other NPCs, which meant that he would have to start recruiting again.

Still, it was easier said than done. Building a cohesive and effective force, training them and supplying them all the while trying to defend against an impending attack? No problem. Marcus thought bitterly.

Hard lessons learned back when he was in the workforce two hundred years ago resurfaced. Marcus took down notes of every task he needed done and broke them down to as small individual parts as he could. It soon grew to a terrifying degree, as just training up his own goblin force amounted to a lot of work. Add the fact that he would have to lead sorties to help the TAS defend against the SRT, then it soon went to a workload enough to give any workaholic a pause.

Still, it was not like he was alone. Now he had men and women he could rely on and so he divided the workload and mentally slotted the scouting for targets of opportunity to Ylenka, with Anna and Rex joining in as their support. Marcus was sure that the pair led by the unpredictable woman would chomp at the bit of danger, which left Marcus to deal with the TAS leadership, logistics of the operation, and the defense of the station. Easy, not.

Arriving at Bo’s shop, Marcus found that the man himself wasn’t there. The shop was quickly becoming their de facto base in the station as Marcus opened one of the lockers given to him and put in the custom Glock. He turned to the rest and sighed. Still a lot to do.

“I think this is as good a time as any for us to discuss what just happened, like some sort of after action report.” Marcus said to everyone in the group. “But first, I’d like to congratulate everyone on a job well done. Our only casualty is the TAS representative that is too eager to be the man left behind to buy time for others. Other than that, I think it’s a successful OP with all things considered.”

No one shouted or cheered, they had already done that part of the celebration when they regrouped following going back on the surface. The winner’s high had long subsided by now and everyone simply gave a professional nod, as if saying that it’s nothing serious.

“With that engagement, I could say that we have learned a lot. But that also meant that the SRT has learnt a lot more since failure teaches more lessons than success. Do not expect the same success to come upon us as I expect the next time that the moment the same situation happens again, we wouldn’t be able to snatch victory from defeat. By now, both the TAS and SRT leadership would have learned of what happened. With our operation, we would have effectively declared which side of the line we are on. No longer are we just another player group in the city but an ally to one clan and an enemy to another.”

“Don’t worry, we all knew what would happen the moment we all signed the dotted line.” Horn replied.

Marcus nodded. “The nature of our own strategy stays the same. The thing now is what to do from now on. We know that direct conflict was out, their advantage in numbers and heavier equipment made sure of that. This means that we would have to keep to hit-and-run tactics. This requires extensive efforts to scout for opportunities, exploit it, and, if possible, steal equipment. Ylenka, I’ve seen your side of that raid and how it went well. Can I ask you to take over that part of the operation for us?”

Ylenka shrugged. “I can.”

Marcus nodded. “As for me, I’ll be talking with the TAS leadership and, also likely, the SRT. They’ve tried reaching out to me before we found out that we’re enemies and they are likely to reach out again to get a feel for how we stand among everything. I’ll also try to handle the logistics side of things, but as it stands right now, almost everything we loot off bodies will probably be handed over to contribute to the station in exchange for the points.”

“Points for exp are always good. They’ll be surprised at how fast we level up even with the time we spend fighting them instead of farming.” Ylenka replied.

Marcus nodded. With his own bank of points, he would be able to jump three levels and get past level 20 easily. There, he would get an extra skill slot to his already filled slots. “Some of the equipment will also have to be slated for the expansion of our own goblin forces. Gabs and Fleex had already shown you some of their capabilities, although insignificant as of now, more rifles firing in the fight still have their effect. But I’ll have to point out that their more important contribution would be in mobility. They all have a knack of moving through the underground tunnels snaking throughout the city and it would allow you more avenues of approach and covert ways of moving through the city. If done well, I can see the SRT being hit, and only for them to wonder where you all disappeared into. If this goes well, then they’ll be finding themselves to be fighting ghosts that could appear and disappear as if on command.”

Everyone nodded and Marcus continued his combination of briefing and a speech. They then moved on to accounting for everything they had taken off the SRT players, which totaled to a M240b machinegun, three M4A1s; two in a barebones configuration, with one fitted with holographic sight. A dozen M61 grenades, 451 rounds of 7.62x51 of M80 and M62 in belts in a 4:1 ball and tracer configuration, 743 rounds of 5.56x45 M855 packed inside 24 STANAG magazines, along with 1566 rounds of loose M855 in bandoliers taken off ammunition cans.

With six men, not counting Razer, it was all they could carry with them on their person. There were still more left within the raided building, like sidearms and rations, but they ran off with the most valuable gear they found. With some quick maths, Marcus estimated the cost of everything to be past 60,000c easy. Marcus had no idea if that was considered a good haul or the norm since he hadn’t had a point of reference, but it was still a gain for them and a loss for the enemy.

Now, the issue that reared its head was caliber commonality. Marcus had decided to keep on arming the Chief with Combloc weapons because of their relative abundance and price, but the weapons they looted off the SRT were of NATO standard. If Marcus would give the weapons to the Chief, then keeping them fed would be a problem in itself. But a big BUT in that argument is that they couldn’t afford to be picky, and so the old adage applied, beggars can’t be choosers.

“Hey! We’re back! Anything happened?” Anna said as she and Rex entered the shop. She looked at the table where their captured loot was laid for everyone to check out, and her eyes lit up. “So, what did we miss?”