The dropship was long gone, swallowed by the storm.
Hudson and Hunter stood at the foot of the 10,000-meter ice mountain, the blizzard already clawing at their visors. Snow whipped sideways in sheets, the wind howling like a living beast.
For a moment, neither spoke. Then Hudson's low, steady voice came through the squad comm.
"Ten thousand meters. Base is at the summit. We move quiet. No slip-ups."
Hunter smirked beneath his visor, scanning the icy wall.
"Ten thousand meters, in a storm. Sounds like boot camp again."
Hudson didn't laugh. "Except boot camp didn't shoot back."
⸻
The Climb
They moved. Not climbing with hooks or gear — running.
Their UNE exo-armor gripped the sheer ice, feet slamming into walls like they were running on solid ground. Each stride carried them meters upward, bursts of speed propelling them higher and higher into the storm.
Snow lashed against their visors. Ice cracked beneath their boots. Every gust of wind threatened to tear them free, but they pressed on, two shadows against a colossal wall of white.
The AI overlays in their helmets marked the elevation: +2,000m... +5,000m... +7,000m.
⸻
The Storm Above
By the time they hit 9,000 meters, the blizzard turned murderous. Visibility dropped to nothing. Even their advanced visors struggled to cut through the whiteout.
Hunter paused on a ledge, crouching low, his voice crackling through the comms.
"Heh, this blizzard is our tactical use to better our camouflage, if the enemy doesn't wear their visors of course. But our Silent shadows type 1 and 2 will make things easier.
Hudson's tone was unshaken.
"Good. Means they can't see us either. Keep moving."
Hunter chuckled darkly. "Always the optimist."
⸻
The Summit
At last, their boots slammed onto the summit. Wind screamed across the peak, strong enough to peel lesser men straight off the mountain.
And there it was — shrouded in ice and storm, looming out of the white like a ghost.
The Typonian base.
A fortress of jagged black alloy, pulsing with faint blue veins of energy. Towers jutted from the glacier like claws, lights glowing faint against the storm. Alien sentries patrolled along the edges — tall, insectoid silhouettes, their movements jerky, unnatural.
Hunter crouched, rifle ready, his visor zooming in.
"There it is. Typonian forward base. Bigger than Command thought."
Hudson drew his suppressed rifle, his tone low, firm.
"Doesn't matter. Silent in. Silent out."
-
The storm screamed across the summit, snow biting at their armor, but Hudson and Hunter crouched low, rifles raised.
Both drew their AR-90Ks — UNE's cutting-edge assault rifle, each one fitted with an advanced suppressor. Not a muffled pop, not a whisper of air — absolute silence. The only sound was the faint click of their triggers arming.
Hunter pointed with two fingers toward the alien sentries ahead — two Typonians, tall and jagged, standing in the glow of a frozen outpost light, their distorted clicks carrying faintly through the wind.
Hunter's voice crackled through the squad link, low and calm.
"Two targets. You take the right. I'll take the left."
Hudson gave the barest nod.
⸻
The Kill
Both Marines took aim, their visors glowing faint red targeting reticles. The storm howled, masking all else.
Two shots fired at once.
Not a sound followed. No crack, no echo. Just two Typonians jerking violently — heads snapping back — before they crumpled into the snow, lifeless.
Hunter's visor flicked green. "Clean."
Hudson reloaded smoothly. "Keep moving."
⸻
The Split
The silhouette of the Typonian fortress loomed closer through the storm, jagged and alien against the snow. Patrols moved in the distance, glowing blue veins of energy running across their armor.
Hudson crouched, scanning their approach.
"Too many eyes to walk in side by side. We split. You take the east flank, I'll clear the west. Meet at the far side of the base."
Hunter smirked under his visor, adjusting the scope of his AR-90K.
"Race you to the rendezvous."
Hudson's tone stayed cold, unshaken.
"Not a race. A hunt."
⸻
The Separation
They moved, fading into the storm.
Hudson ghosted west — a silent shadow cutting through snowdrifts, his rifle snapping once, twice, each time dropping an alien sentry with perfect, noiseless precision.
Hunter scaled the eastern cliffs, crouching high on the ridges, picking off Typonian guards with surgical headshots that left no sound, no trace but the faint collapse of bodies vanishing into white.
Both Marines disappeared into different jaws of the storm.
And the Typonians never knew death was already inside their base.
-
The blizzard howled like a beast, drowning out all but the pounding of Hudson's heart. He crouched low, moving along the jagged ice ridge on the west flank of the Typonian base.
Snow clung to his armor. His visor dimmed to camouflage mode, his breath slow and controlled. He activated Silent Shadow Tactic Type 1 — and in that instant, the storm itself swallowed him whole.
His body seemed to mute. No crunch of boots in snow. No rattle of armor. Even the wind carried around him like he wasn't there. To the Typonians, he wasn't a man. He was absence.
⸻
The Barracks
Hudson slipped inside the first structure: a long, blackened spire of alien alloy, its entrance guarded by two insectoid warriors. Their mandibles clicked faintly as they scanned the storm.
Hudson ghosted past them, stepping through the doorway between patrol sweeps. They never noticed.
Inside, the heat hit him like a wall — humid, heavy. Alien barracks stretched into the dark, glowing with dim bioluminescent lights. Dozens of Typonians slept in chitinous pods hanging from the walls, their limbs twitching as if caught in dreams.
Hudson's visor marked them, but he didn't fire. Orders were recon — not massacre. Still, when one guard stepped from the shadows, raising a strange, organic rifle —
Pffft.
A single suppressed round through the skull. The body slumped, noiseless, the hiss of ichor lost in the heat. Hudson dragged it behind a pod, vanished again into shadow.
⸻
The Infirmary
He crossed into another chamber, this one reeking of chemicals and decay. An infirmary, alien-style — wounded Typonians suspended in liquid pods, their chitinous shells split open, organs regenerating under eerie blue fluids. Strange machines pulsed around them, grown from flesh and metal alike.
Hudson moved between them, recording with his visor. Intel confirmed: regenerative technology. Worth analysis.
Two medics entered from the far corridor, their arms fused with surgical tools. They didn't see him.
Silent Shadow carried Hudson behind them. Two muffled shots later, they collapsed wordlessly, their bodies blending into the liquid pools.
⸻
The Kill and the Ghost
Outside again, the storm swallowed Hudson whole. He stalked patrols along the perimeter, one by one.
• A sentry paused to scan the storm.
• A faint shimmer flickered behind him.
• His head snapped forward with a soft crack.
Body gone. Snow already covering it.
Hudson's voice whispered through comms, barely audible even to Hunter:
"West side clear. Barracks and infirmaries swept. Meeting you on the other side."
⸻
The Typonian base roared with life — but none of them knew the storm itself was killing them.
Hudson moved on, the ghost in the blizzard.
-
The storm hadn't eased in forty-five minutes. If anything, it howled harder, tearing at Hudson's visor as he slipped along the farthest edge of the Typonian base.
He moved through shadows, through ice cracks, through black corridors where no human had ever stepped. He left a trail of corpses — quiet, invisible, erased by wind and snow. Each one a ghost-story the Typonians would never tell.
⸻
The Target
Finally, his HUD pinged. Energy tanks.
They towered like monstrous hearts in the snow — enormous canisters of glowing blue ichor, pulsing with unnatural life. Pipes ran from them into the main fortress, feeding its weapons and shields.
Hudson crouched low, gaze sweeping the perimeter. Two guards circled, insectoid eyes scanning the storm.
Pfft. Pfft.
Two shots. No sound. Two corpses in the snow.
He moved in, pulled a matte-black capsule from his pack, and pressed it against the largest tank. The device hissed, expanding into a compact cluster of charges. His HUD glowed: ARMED – SILENT TIMER ENGAGED.
Hudson planted three more, spacing them evenly. Each one vanished into the snow like it had always been there.
⸻
The Ghost Walks On
He stepped back, watching the tanks glow, knowing their pulse was now ticking toward death. His visor flickered a warning: Yield Radius – 500m.
He whispered through comms, his voice cold, clipped.
"Charges planted. Energy tanks compromised. Rendezvous at main entrance."
Hunter's reply came, smooth and confident, faint under the storm's roar.
"Copy. East flank clear. Meet you at the door."
⸻
The Exit
Hudson faded into the blizzard again, slipping around the edge of the fortress. His footsteps left no sound. Patrols passed within meters, never knowing the reaper brushed past them.
At last, through the white storm, he saw it: the main entrance doors of the Typonian base — jagged black alloy, towering and alien.
A silhouette crouched in the snow just meters away. Hunter. Rifle raised, calm as ever, watching his six.
The two elites locked eyes through glowing visors.
Silent nod.
The ghosts had returned.
-
Snow whipped across the summit. The Typonian base loomed, jagged and alive with alien energy. Sentries prowled in the storm, weapons glowing faintly, eyes scanning for intruders.
Hudson crouched low beside Hunter, both rifles steady. Hunter's voice came calm over the private comm:
"We go silent. Type Two."
Hudson gave a sharp nod. Both men steadied their breathing, their visors pulsing faint red. Then — they activated Silent Shadow Tactic Type 2.
⸻
The Vanishing
In an instant, their bodies shimmered — then erased.
Not just sight.
Not just sound.
Armor, rifles, helmets — gone.
Even the storm seemed to pass through them without resistance. To the naked eye, there was nothing. To scanners, nothing. To sound, nothing.
They weren't invisible. They were not there.
⸻
The Walk Through Death
The two UNE Elites strode directly toward the main entrance, stepping through the storm like phantoms.
Typonian guards loomed at the doorway, insectoid bodies bristling with bio-weapons, mandibles clicking in alien speech. Their glowing eyes swept the snow — right through where Hudson and Hunter passed.
No pause. No alarm. No shot fired.
The two Marines walked directly past them, unseen, unfelt, their rifles in hand yet erased from the world.
The enemy advanced helmet detectors can't register them, since silent shadow type 2 erases their very essence physically and spiritually.
⸻
The Command Center
Inside, the fortress command center pulsed with alien light. Walls of black alloy stretched high, lined with writhing conduits glowing with energy. Dozens of Typonian officers moved about — tapping on organic consoles, feeding data streams into fleshy towers that pulsed like living organs.
Hudson and Hunter walked right through them.
Alien officers brushed past without reaction. Guards patrolled with claws raised, but not one so much as glanced at the two ghosts moving through their heart.
Hunter's voice whispered through the link, the only thing still real about them:
"Command center. Right where we want to be."
Hudson's eyes scanned the room, his visor tagging critical nodes: power cores... command nexus... neural uplink hub.
"Plant charges here. This place goes dark. Permanently."
⸻
The Silent Predators
They moved deeper, erasure still active. Every step was a blade across the Typonians' throat, and none of them knew it.
The UNE's deadliest ghosts were inside their command heart.
And the storm outside was nothing compared to the storm that was about to break within.
——————————————
To be continued...