Dragon Hunter

Chapter 47: A Results Oriented Effort

That brief conversation set up a gruelling next few weeks for the determined young human and his two relatively new comrades. After a brief meal and a bath to refresh themselves, the three of them had their squad and a new target waiting for them when they finished their own preparations.

The following attack, yet again relieving a sacred ruin under attack by a full wing of imperial dragons, took the better part of two days to counter. The next almost three days, and the one following that less than a day.

Each time Cooper and what he quickly started calling 'his team', the primal silver dragon Saddahk, and the ancient Sidhe elf Theron, would jump in along with their escort of dark elf soldiers. They would then, wherever possible, immediately assault the attacking flight, which was always in the air surrounding the target when they arrived.

Cooper would provide long distance attacks, gashing the dragons in the air before they knew what hit them. Saddahk then provided near distance attack and defense, along with area of effect capabilities, further degrading a flight's ability to counter their assault. And finally Theron on the ground gave them additional hand to hand capabilities, useful when the dragons were driven to take were-forms in an attempt to track down their attackers and neutralize them. Especially when it came to keeping those were-forms off Cooper and Saddahk so the two ranged-attack warriors could continue doing damage

Forcing the imperials to take were-form also had the added benefit of putting them within striking distance of their dark elf escort. More vulnerable in were-form, the imperial dragons became easier targets of the noriquien soldiers, who, after long months of being slaughtered by dragonfire, gas attacks, and a variety of other dragon-specific assaults, were hungry for vengeance.

Combined all together, it became a recipe for success that saw the guerilla-style attacks gash deeper and deeper into the imperial ranks occupying the planet. Which, in turn, had the desired effect of pulling higher, and higher ranking command officers out of their command posts in an attempt to neutralize them. Only to find themselves falling to the very weapons they sought to silence.

Of course, each retreat back to Daria's base, now called the New Hope Forward Operating Base, to retrieve a new escort after leaving their current escort behind as a garrison to hold the territory they had liberated, had challenges of its own. The least of which not being the fact that the base seemed to double in size each time they shadow gated back into it.

Unsurprisingly the exponential size increases came with the arrival of additional troops, sent in response to the victories Cooper and his team were piling up. And, in turn, those additional troops gave the team a larger pool of resources to draw from as they seconded the newly arrived soldiers into their next escort squads. And that meant the original limit of ten back to back missions quickly became twenty, then thirty, and forty.

Cooper barely stifled the tired and pained groan that made it past his lips as, that fortieth mission now behind them, the base reappeared around them. The effort to successfully finish forty missions had sunk deep into his bones in the form of fatigue and wear-and-tear pain. Pain the shadow port had for the briefest of moments lifted from him.

Pain that returned in a rush as soon as his booted feet were back on the ground.

"Great Trees!" Theron, sounding as tired as the human felt, grunted out loud. "Are those towers new??"

Cooper didn't bother to look. He knew they were. In fact, most of the base was brand new, reflective of the fact that Noriquien Central Command had relocated a number of high level officers here to directly observe the counter attack that was slowly but surely retaking their ancestral home world back from the Empire.