Bast had learned alot about her new friend in the last two days. Her name was Sekh, and she was great at watching others. The huntress made her living hunting the hard to reach game in the mountain valleys, but she had not forgotten about the camp of men.

She led Bast down a well worn footpath to a small knoll that overlooked the small camp below. Bast found that it was smaller than she had expected, containing only about half a dozen tents that were mostly made of plastic tarps, and many were half patched with other pieces of plastic, some random furs and even some random pieces of clothing stolen from the small towns and villages that they kept at their mercy.

“They always leave at least one man behind,” Sekh said as she unslung her rifle and made her way to a grassless patch near a small boulder. Bast could tell the woman must have lain there for countless hours as all of her gear was placed in a spot where it had worn away everything but the bare earth.

“Yeah,” Sekh said after looking through the scope.

“It's the one I call the gimp,” she said and motioned for Bast to come over and look through the scope.

Bast set herself behind the rifle and made sure to keep her fingers well clear of the trigger. Something her father had drilled into her for her entire life was to never put your finger near a trigger unless you were ready to shoot.  

Bast looked through the telescopic lens and found a man with one leg splayed at an unnatural angle, and the other supporting him under a log bench. Bast could tell he was bored, as he seemed to idly poke the flames with his fire poker. Bast found nothing particularly striking about the man except for the long scar beside one of his eyes.

Bast lowered the rifle and handed it back to Sekh.

“How long will they be gone?” Bast asked as she rubbed her eyes and sat down next to her cat-like helmet.

“They would've come straight back here, eaten all of our food, done any maintenance on the bikes, and then headed out the next day. Should be back tomorrow night,” Sekh said and laid back down behind the large rifle and continued to watch the idle man's every move.

Bast didn't say anything for a few moments as she watched the practiced movements of the obviously disturbed woman obsess over her prey.

“I can tell you've spent a lot of time here. How would you want to do it?” The bounty hunter asked and began to look over the natural terrain surrounding the camp. It was built on a small rise with a relatively level and cleared area around it. The heavy bikes had cut a fairly clear trail through one end of the valley to the other and had rutted it out in several places.

“I want to hit them where they sleep. They take away where we feel safe, why can’t we do the same to them?” She said as she patted the side of her rifle.

“I can make them feel just like my sister did. Helpless.”

Bast could tell she was on the verge of tears, screaming, or maybe both. She understood that kind of torment all too well.

“I will take care of the lookout then,” Bast said and patted the distraught huntress. It would give the woman a minute to gather herself and allow Bast to show a bit of what she could do. She didn’t like the idea of killing an injured man, but he was a bad one and if she allowed him to live, he would go on hurting people.

Bast put her helmet back on and activated her standard hunting protocol.

“Recon,” she announced to the helmet, without her audio control engaged, the only place that could hear her voice was inside the closed system.

Overlays began to scroll across her HUD, detecting nearby heat signatures and marking paths.
The display instantly found the guard and his fire.

Basts’ helmet lit a suggested route around the still drinking man. Each footstep was highlighted for concealment and sound. She really was a cat sometimes, she thought to herself as she drew her fathers blade from its place on her back. She didn’t like killing a defenseless man, but in this case, her honor demanded it. She granted the only mercy that she could, a swift death.

The man lolled from his stump with his head and torso no longer joined.

A swift and practiced flick of the blade cleaned it from the ilk that had stained its razor edge, and just as quickly it returned to her back to rest. Bast finally let out a breath and turned to wave at Sekh. Her wave was answered with a thundering boom.