2954-01-14 – Tales from the Service: The Swan’s Ultimatum 

Sara Swan saw right away, watching the camp after her little ambush, that she was experiencing a bit of luck. Shortly after the skulking fellow returned to their campsite to report what he had seen, she watched through her magnifier as a loud argument broke out between two of the largest, most brutish of their number. The young, wiry skulker, who seemed every moment to be wiser than most of his fellows, sat scowling nearby as his two self-styled betters roared at each other. 

Sara couldn’t hear what was being said, but it hardly mattered. The dispute, as they often did among such ruffians, came to blows before too long, and the loser of the brief row retreated to grumble with a pair of his closest comrades. Soon, the trio scattered, and Sara watched them slip around to each of the guard-posts within her view, speaking to those on duty. 

It wasn’t long before half of the ruffians, following the brute who’d lost the scuffle for dominance, were hoisting packs onto their backs and heading down from the hilltop where the old Survey facility was situated, in the opposite direction from where the bodies of their two comrades lay. The self-styled leader but no, caught off-guard, didn’t seem to notice the exodus until they were already all out of the camp. He shouted at them to return, but this had no effect. 

The wiry youth went with them at first, talking to their leader, but not long after they were out of sight, he came creeping back. 

Sara watched until nightfall, but there was no sign of the departing group. She could only speculate what they thought leaving the site would do. Perhaps they had guessed that the deaths of the two unfortunate scouts were all too related to the treasure up there on the hill. Perhaps – and this seemed more likely – they thought their leader somehow responsible for the deaths, or did not like his response to the crisis. 

Flipping the magnifier into night-vision mode once the last vestiges of color bled from the western horizon, Sara counted the remaining figures in the camp as they moved around. There were somewhere between twelve and twenty remaining – still a concern, but not so many that Sara was worried about exterminating them. 

She retreated to set up a spartan camp-site after observing the first change of guard. If those brigands had any sense, they would sleep ill that night, but Sara intended to sleep soundly herself. Better to let them fight their imaginations before she made her next move. 

Making camp on the reverse slope of a hill more than two kilometers from her prey, Sara lit no fire, ate only a cold ration-bar, and drank only sparingly from her canteen. There were many small streams in the area that were drinkable after treated with a sanitization tablet, but that was an opportunity to be spotted out in the open. She pulled her camo-netting over a slight hollow in the ground, then unrolled a thermal blanket from her pack and wormed underneath. 

Sara was already up when the first splash of pink light appeared over the eastern hills, and before the stellar primary peeked over the horizon, her gear was all back in her pack. She briefly debated whether it was worthwhile to pursue and investigate the departing group, but with an unknown amount of time left before the scavengers’ ship returned, that probably wasn’t worthwhile. She had to clear the ones guarding her prize, call in her ship, pull the reactor, and get out fast, ideally without putting herself in too much danger. 

When she put eyes on the camp again, she found the guards warily scanning the horizon from their posts while others put the finishing toch on a simple breastwork of pre-fab panels between their flimsy shelters to form a crude wall around the hilltop. This was a surprisingly wise and industrious development; even though the paneling wouldn’t stop any serious incoming fire, it would give them something to hide behind in a firefight. If they continued to dig into their position, it would prolong the struggle considerably. 

It was time to accelerate the timetable. Sara retreated to a safe distance and called up her hoverskiff, which carried far more gear than her pack. Using its tiny onboard fabricator, she loaded the carry bay of a multipurpose drone with polypaper strips weighted with little metal plumbs, then sent it on a looping course out to approach the encampment at high altitude from the other side for a bombing run. She hoped they wouldn’t be able to shoot it down, but wanted them to see it all the same as it dropped its leaflets. 

Sara was back on her hilltop observation post long before the drone reached the drop point of its flight plan. Sure enough, the sentries spotted it, and a few arc rifle shots crackled uselessly up into the sky, most hopelessly wide. The carry-bay opened just where it had been programmed, and the drone, now on an automatic evasive routine, made a jerky retreat. 

The wind put most of Sara’s leaflets outside their defensive perimeter, but enough landed that the message was not lost. On each polypaper slip, she’d had the fabricator print a simple message: 

LEAVE NOW OR DIE. 

WITH LOVE,  
THE SWAN 

It was probable these frontier ruffians didn’t know what a swan was, so she’d had the fabricator emboss a simple stipple-shaded image of a swan next to the words, to give them a bit of a mental image. It was, in her view, the little touches like this that were most effective in sowing terror. 

Sure enough, several of the brigands ran to show their leader the leaflets, and another boisterous argument broke out to whose specifics Sara was not party. 

Oddly, though, not everyone in the camp was paying attention to the argument. While their leader was waving his fist and rallying his men in defiance of this message from the air, a slim figure crept over the breastworks, apparently unobserved from within, and crept down the hillside. 

Obviously, Nojus has told us little of the history of this Sara Swan character, but from the specifics of this account, she is a canny operator whose bushcraft is far above the civilian average. He did say that perhaps she is over-hyping her own abilities in this account – and I can see hints of that even myself, not being at all experienced in such arts – but taking on a force of dozens of armed men solo is still a feat of great courage if nothing else. 

[N.T.B.] - It’s also a feat of great foolhardiness, even for Miss Swan here, and even if done in such a slinking fashion as she prefers when dealing with direct opposition. Had her opposition had even two people near her equal in fieldcraft and well motivated to repel her assault, she would have been in great danger. 

Fortunately, the one person approaching this ability present did not have the initiative to try to hunt her in the field as she slept unguarded. If he’d found her, the story would have ended there.