**Author:** RossiSinc **You Can Find Me At:** u/RossiSinc --- October 9th, 2042 – Somewhere near Zagreb, formerly Croatia. Something had taken the building’ wall down, spilling rubble into the street. Rain was spattering into the old office now, damping down the dust. The room had been gutted long before the bomb had redecorated, but enterprising Russian airborne troops had tried to turn it into a liveable space. There was still smattering of cot beds scattered around, some kit and equipment too. Stood where he was, toes hanging over the broken edge of the floor, James Sinclair could see the rest of his team picking through the wreckage. The Russians were still here too, or at least one of them was. The body of a junior officer was stretched out on the floor by his right boot, sprawled on their back. If she’d had eyes, they’d have been staring up at the crumbling edge of the floor above, but she didn’t have a head. They’d not found it, they’d looked. ‘Anything?’ he called back too them, hoping that this part of the job at least had been fruitful. Kappa had promised them good takings, and their American paymasters had assured them that they could take what they needed. They’d have done it anyway, No-Pats always made do.  His big Dutch-born point man, Gerrit Bakker, shrugged his shoulders and rolled his head back despairingly. ‘Fuck all boss-man.’ He shifted the weight of his carbine across his front, turned to look at the slender formerly French Louis Archambault. ‘Anything? Ma petit grenouille?’ Archambault looked up from the kit box he was ransacking, glared at his friend, slowly and deliberately lifted his middle finger, then turned to look at Sinclair. ‘Like the big oaf says boss, que dalle. More later non? More to do today.’ The last of his team, Spanish-born Sophia Perez, was picking through the wreckage at the back of the room, tossing kit bags around and rifling through the pockets of scattered clothes. She had a small stack of kit bags and clothes that could be useful stacked off to one side. She looked back at his question, tossed down the bergen she was holding. ‘Nothing boss. Drier than me when Bakker starts talking about water polo.’ She sauntered back over to them all and repeated Archambault’s gesture to the big man, but kept a shit-eating grin on her face. Bakker blew a kiss back and looked down at the dead Russian. ‘Anyone checked her?’ He asked. Sinclair shook his head, looked back down at the slowing trickle of blood from the woman’s neck. Perez dropped down by the body and started to run expert hands through pockets and seams. She stopped so suddenly that Archambault half-lifted his LCMG to the ready on instinct. Perez pulled her hand slowly from the thigh pocket she’d been checking. They all saw what was in her hands. ‘Mijn God’ exclaimed Bakker. The yellow paper packet was too good to be true. Better than gold. Sinclair let out a small bark of laughter at the ridiculousness of it all. A pack of peanut M&M’s, and they were only a few years out of date. -- Kappa found them a short while later. He was a wiry New Zealander with thinning copper hair, and by dint of the fact that he’d been an officer once, he was in charge. He picked his way across the rubble in the street, and stopped to look up at them all, squinting against the thickening rain. ‘All good Raider? Anything useful?’ He asked. There was hope in his voice. It was one of things that Sinclair liked about the man, he still had hope. Even in the face of the overwhelming cavalcade of shit that was rolling against them, Kappa still had hope that one day, everything would be alright. Sinclair hated that too, he and the rest of Raider Team were all resigned to the fact that things would always, continually, get worse. Sometimes he wanted to smash his rifle-butt into Kappa’s face so hard all that stupid fucking optimism would bleed out all over the floor. ‘Not much’ he replied ‘Some bags, some clothes. No rations, no weapons, no ammo. Are we moving on?’ Kappa ran his left hand over his grimy face, kept his right firmly on the pistol grip of the K30 sub-machine gun he had slung across his plate carrier. ‘Yeah mate’ he said, ‘Time to move on.’ -- They gathered up and moved out. 143 of them filtering out of the ruin of the make-shift Russian Forward Operating Base they’d been employed by the US to smash up. Two other No-Pat groups under Kappa’s direction would be doing the same from the other two FOBs they’d cleared. All of them would be heading down into a shallow valley, where a bigger Russian base was waiting. They’d cleared the FOBs to uncover the larger base, and now they had to take that too for… Well, for whatever reason the US wanted them to take it for. Only Kappa knew anything more than the most basic coordinating instructions, and he was never much in the mood for sharing. The US had promised Kappa’s No-Pats ammunition for the fight, and food and fuel for their families after the fight was done. That was enough for them. They spread out from the FOB, shook out into skirmish lines by squads, and headed down toward the base of the valley. The rain kept coming down. Raider stayed toward the centre of the advance; Kappa kept with them. He trusted them as much as anyone, they at least were all former professional soldiers who had been together for a long time. The rest of his No-Pats were anyone who’d wanted to come and could tote a weapon. Some of them had been fighting for a long time and were just as good as the misfits who made up Raider, but Sinclair’s team at least had the gloss of being trained and choosing to do this job, rather than being forced to by circumstance. The No-Pats were an easily accessible ragged army of expendable manpower that could be gotten for some bullets and a handful of rice. Sinclair knew full well that the US and Russians both used No-Pat forces to keep their hands clean. It was a proxy war between the two remaining powers that was only still a ‘proxy’ because everyone turned a knowingly blind eye to the No-Pats bleeding and dying for both sides. Some changes were coming. No-Pat forces out for themselves and no-one else were springing up, and some said they had real clout. Some people were mentioning a group led by a man called ‘Oz’ as the one to be following, a real and growing power. Sinclair watched the rain come down as he paced forward, the lines of No-Pat’s around him turned to shadows in the rain, and knew wholeheartedly that he really didn’t give a fuck about any of it. -- Bullets reached out for them. Snapping in the now pouring rain as the No-Pats pressed forward into the teeth of the Russian resistance. Men and women had already gone down to the scything arcs of fire. Someone somewhere was screaming in a language Sinclair didn’t know. Raider ran forward fast and low, two at a time. Bakker and Archambault, then Sinclair and Perez. Fire and move, fire and move. The basics. No movement without fire. They didn’t bawl and shout to each other, good soldiers knew to move when the other half of the team started firing and knew that when they were firing their mates were moving. Raider was about as well drilled as the No-Pats got, they moved forward quickly, never letting up. Smoke thickened in front of them, launched as the assault had kicked off. The fire came back at them from a trio of thick concrete towers peeking over a barrier wall made of blast-resistant sections. Heavy machine gun fire, rifle fire. There were shadowy figures back further in the base on rooftops firing as well. Someone was working a mortar from up there too; thumping shrapnel rounds down onto the onrushing No-Pats. Raider thumped into the base wall after a last rush toward it, aiming at a point where they could see the blast walling had been badly slotted together. Perez and Sinclair hoisted grenades up and over for a bit of cover, then they all backed off as Archambault wedged C5 charges into gap he’d found. Once they were clear, the slender man triggered the detonator. There was a gut punch of over-pressure as the explosives did their work, and before even the last few pieces of concrete rubble had smacked into the ground Bakker was through, weapon up and spitting. He’d switched his carbine out for a big drum-fed shotgun he carried for moments like this, and it thundered in the dull dead-sound that filled their ears after the explosion. Raider followed him in, tight to his broad back. More No-Pats followed them, spreading out. Russian airborne troops rushed to meet them, to close the breach. Fire and movement again, Sinclair snapping his aim between dull shapes in the rain, smoke and now boiling water-fog. His carbine kicked back into his shoulder, the fitted suppressor turning the weapons discharge into a dull thud as he fired. Shapes went over, tumbled back from him, broken and falling. Perez was at his side, her rifle thudding too, Archambault on the other side of Bakker was thundering out strings of tracer from his LCMG. Grenades banged. Incendiaries popped and hissed. It seemed for half a second that every rifle on earth was firing all at once, even though time seemed to slide past like cold grease. Sinclair felt the fight-time speed up again as more shapes appeared through the streaming rain at the back of the Russian force. He heard the buzz of a K30, and the mixed rattle of the ragged No-Pat arsenal as the last of the grey Russian soldiers crumpled and fell. Kappa was in front of him then, shoving No-Pats toward the central building to clear it, urging Raider on, bawling at someone – anyone – to clear the last of the defence towers by the wall. Raider was inside by the time someone blew the towers roof off with another C5 charge. -- They’d cleared the rest of the place out inside an hour. More poor Russians cornered and killed. Some taken prisoner. No-Pats milled everywhere, searching out anything of use to take. A sad rank of No-Pat bodies had been laid out along the edge of the base’s vehicle park under a dirty and holed tarpaulin. Raider had found a vehicle shed and were re-loading magazines and examining their personal spoils when they all heard the engines. Other No-Pats looked up at the sound. Kappa came out to the centre of the vehicle park and bawled them all back to edges. ‘It’s the US!’ he shouted, ‘They’re the ones who got us here, come to get their prize. Stay out of their way. When they’re gone, we get our ride out.’ He waved his arms, shooing the curious No-Pats yet further back. The engines belonged to a pair of Apache gunships, followed by four Little Birds and one of the big MV-38 Condors the US used to carry heavy loads or troops. The Apache’s rolled over the compound then settled into an overwatch patter, the Little Birds came in as the Condor stood off. Sinclair could see soldiers on the bench seats along the sides of the light helicopters. They touched down, and spread out in defensive positions in the vehicle park, facing down the still-curious No-Pats. No ragged horde this time. Sinclair looked them over. All uniform, all big men and women, all well-armed and with a clear and lethal attitude that fucking with them would be a bad idea. They were US Special Forces, not the regular grunts who usually followed in the wake of the No-Pats. That meant something big was going down. Sinclair looked over at Kappa. The Kiwi was clearly nervous, and that made Sinclair nervous. He caught his team’s attention, made some quick hand signs. Be ready. Trouble maybe. Raider spread out, edged through the milling crowd, found places they could get good fire down if needed. Sinclair was face to face with a tense looking SOF operator when the Condor came down.  The big jet thundered in like the storm, swinging around to drop the ramp in the centre of the circle of US operators. More operators came out and moved toward the building at the centre of the former Russian base. Sinclair watched them go, then turned to look back at the American in front of him. ‘Hey’ he said, jerked his head toward the retreating backs of the team going into the building, ‘What’s going down?’. The American very slowly raised his weapon up to a far-less-than-low-ready and stared Sinclair down. ‘None of your fucking business No-Pat’ he spat. Sinclair raised his hands in mock-surrender. ‘Easy bro, I’m just curious as to why we’re here is all. You guys are Green Berets yeah? I did a training rotation through Bragg years ago with you guys. Good dudes. I’m just asking, one warrior to another.’ The soldier softened a bit, let the muzzle of his weapon drop a fraction. ‘I can’t tell you what it is.’ He spoke. Shrugged a little. ‘If you served, you know.’ Sinclair nodded a little, took a half pace forward. Decided to push his luck a little. ‘C’mon bro, do me a solid. Give me some info. At least make it worthwhile me and my team being stood out here in the pissing rain.’ The US soldier took a half step forward himself, snapped his weapon back up. Sinclair saw the tension come back into his shoulders. Saw the man open his mouth to spit some words out. ‘Fuck. Off. No. Pat.’ -- Twenty minutes the US team had been inside the building before they came out. No No-Pats went in with them, but Kappa had a tense and short conversation with one of them as they emerged. They carried something with them, big enough that two operators had to carry it, covered by their teammates. They hustled it up the ramp and away before anyone got a decent look at it. The Condor was lifting off before the last one was halfway up the ramp. All the No-Pats watched it as it burned away into the sky, the two Apache’s joining it as it flew away southwards. The rest of the US ground team stayed in place, but for two who went over to speak with Kappa. Another short conversation. Kappa gestured over to the gaggle of maybe ten prisoners they’d taken as they cleared the compound. The US soldiers nodded, strode purposefully over toward them. ‘No…’ Sinclair heard himself say. ‘No!’ he proclaimed louder. The US troops didn’t even break stride, just swung their weapons up and emptied their magazines into the defenceless detainees, toppling them over in puffs of blood and dust and atomised rain. They kept walking, past the stunned No-Pats, and re-joined their teammates like they’d been on a summer constitutional as the Little-Birds howled in to take them away. -- Kappa watched them go, spat on the ground as the dwindled away in the dark sky. Then wandered toward Raider. Sinclair watched him come, knew that the day wasn’t done. Kappa fixed his gaze on the steaming pile of wreckage that had been people moments before as he spoke. ‘They’re sending evac choppers to an airfield eight kay from here for us in six hours.’ He looked up at Sinclair, his eyes were dead. ‘From there we go to Vincenza where we staged from, to meet our families. They say there’s more work if we want it. In Libya, maybe something in Egypt.’ Sinclair watched him and realised that some of that omni-present hope was gone, eroded some more, some of it shot down alongside the poor fucking Russians bleeding all over the tarmac nearby. He decided that he hated that even more than the fact that Kappa had hope, that he could finally lose some of it.  -- They burned the whole base. The buildings, the contents they couldn’t carry off, the dead. The No-Pats took their own dead with them. Even the end of the world they’d know could kill all aspects of their humanity. Sinclair heard them talking as they pushed on to the airfield. ‘Oz’ got mentioned again. More rumours and ideas. That the US was cooking up some super-weapon, that the Russians were taking over the worlds power grid and killing anyone in their way. That people somewhere knew what had caused the Blackout of 2040. That No-Pats would inherit everything once the last of the nation’s fell. Sinclair knew then and there he really was right; shit was going to get a whole lot worse.