Absent Comrades

Here they come, Jerrold Pershing thought to himself as he spotted the rising dust cloud on the horizon. Even without his PISCES helmet’s built-in magnification suite, he knew its source even at this distance; his augmented hearing picking up the rumble of half a dozen heavy duty engines, his enhanced eyes picking up the glint off of windshields and even weapons optics. His augmentations might have been below that of a Spartan’s, but they were good enough for him.
Pershing was stood atop a large rocky outcropping, jutting above the grass plains that dominated this part of Kayarhan, watching as the caravan of vehicles continued to approach. They were raiders of some fashion or another, bandits, thieves, and almost certainly killers. He wasn’t particularly sure of the specifics, nor could he find himself particularly bothered to care. All Jerrold Pershing knew was that they had stolen supplies and money from the town of Çakika for the better part of a year before he had arrived. He knew that they’d killed men for standing up, and when that failed to pacify the town, they’d killed women and children too.
He glanced down at the small pile of munitions he had stashed at the bottom of the outcropping, mostly ammunition, but a handful of weapons. An off-brand copy of the MA5, his New Alexandria Police-issue M6B service pistol, an SRS99D sniper rifle and, chief among them, his M319 grenade launcher. Upon sighting his grenade launcher, Pershing’s mind briefly flashed back to when he had obtained his prized weapon shortly after being recruited into Doctor Leonard Church’s Project FREELANCER. It had been with him through countless missions during the project, even when the Freelancers had rebelled against Church, their annexation into the UNSC, and their subsequent defection after the end of the war.
Jerrold chuckled to himself, wondering how this situation would have played out had he had just one other Freelancer here with him. Michigan would’ve likely worked out how to break down some old cars into a workable barricade line. Wyoming, North Dakota, or Colorado would be engaging targets by now; probably pulling off some ungodly trickshot, like bouncing a round off a fender panel and into the driver of a different vehicle. Minnesota would’ve just started blasting them with that laser cannon of his, until he killed them all or the battery ran dry. Tex and Carolina… well, he wouldn’t even need to do anything were either of them present.
His brief nostalgic humorings quickly passed into a sad, somewhat empty reminder that they were all gone. Not all dead, in fact Jerrold likely waged that most of his former comrades were still alive, active in their own games and struggles in the galaxy; but they weren’t here. They were quick to scatter after the war ended, they had to be if they wanted it to work. The surviving Freelancers were under heavy surveillance following their rebellion against Church, and that left little room for planning and organizing rendezvous locations; so when the time came, they had to take it.
And they had. Within days of their desertion, Pershing found himself unable to contact Tennessee, Hawaii, or Delaware. The last he knew, the three were heading towards Falaknuma before jumping again to Vasidrus, where they intended to lay low before moving on again. By the time Pershing had made it there four months later, he was unable to find any trace of them.
It was a story that he had found himself repeating quite annoyingly throughout 2553. He would pick up a lead on another Freelancer, but by the time he arrived they were long gone, if they were ever there to begin with. There were times when Jerrold wondered if they were avoiding him specifically, which he quickly realized was foolish; but despite how childish it was, it was at times a hard feeling to shake as he traveled deeper into the rapidly growing Frontier regions. That was how he had originally come to find himself on worlds like Kayarhan, looking for any signs of his companions, before he realized that there was more important work to be done.
Even some of the people he considered himself the closest too had largely vanished, with him having only the vaguest of hints as to where Michigan and Minnesota were. There was only a handful of things he was relatively certain of, one of which being that they were most likely all still alive. The other was that he was sure that, wherever Tex and Carolina had wound up, they’d likely taken most of the other top agents and were burning their own warpath through the world, working towards their own goals and agendas free of outside interference.
Out of everyone in the program, there were only two people whom Jerrold knew exactly where to find. The first was Wyoming, his old coworker from back when he was a simply beat cop, and the other was his own cousin, Melanie. In both cases, he purposefully elected to leave them be, out of both a sense of professional courtesy and personal respect. They both had their own lives to deal with, and he was absolutely loathe at the idea of bringing his growing brand of trouble to disrupt that.
Pershing shook his head slightly and snapped back to the present. By this point, the line of vehicles was likely only a mile out at most and rapidly approaching, though in another thirty seconds they’d hit the minefield he’d constructed the night before. He might not have been as technically inclined as Michigan, but he could still rig something up on short notice. Briefly lowering himself to grab the SRS99 and its ammo, he thought that while he might not be North Dakota or Colorado, he could still likely plug at least a handful of the survivors before they managed to react.
There were a hell of a lot of Freelancers, and quite a few that were better than him; but right now, Agent Virginia was the only one left, and he damn sure intended to be the last man standing.