The Torfprom Guard outpost was under fire, yet I was struggling to find out from where. Copper-suited guys ran past me, getting to firing positions on the crumbling rock fence or in the windows. Some of the stalkers made a break for it, running towards the bridge, and Seriy cursed at their cowardice. I heard a scream over the gunfire and glanced back, the guard in the tower had gotten hit and fell out of the watchtower. His leg hit the ground first, and I heard a nauseating snap. The screaming got louder.

"Fuck it, these guys probably don't need another gun but he needs some help.", I muttered to myself and ran to the wounded man.

He was rapidly losing conciousness. Blood flowed from the wound in his shoulder, and I grabbed one of the bandages on me to stop it. Now, I'm not the most adept battlefield surgeon, but even I knew to check his back first. The bullet wasn't inside, there was a clear wound on the other side too. I applied the bandages quickly, pressing the wound to help lower the bloodflow. The Guardian came back to his senses for a second, screeching like a maniac from pain, and I used this opportunity to make him drink vodka. It would numb the pain a bit. That's when I heard footsteps, and looked up to see a man in brown trenchcoat, with a beanie on his head and a patch crossed bones and skull on it. This had to the be the Pirate Shellfish had mentioned. He raised an AK at me, and I could see life flash before my eyes. The Beretta rifle of mine was too far to reach before he would fire.

A burst from my left struck the man, and I saw Shellfish stride forth from my left, APS rifle booming as it rained flechettes on the marine bandit. The man dropped dead on the ground, but his comrades weren't far away. Others in trenchcoats with PBF masks and Altyn helmets were closing in. The watchtower was hit, as was the rock fence in front of me. Some type of machine gun began chugging lead our way. I saw another man emerge from the building behind us, the greensuited stalker from earlier. He fired his G3 rifle wildly at the Pirates, then ducked down as another swarm of angry bullets struck the door he had come from.

"I'm a medic, I can help him. Can you two keep those Schweine off me while I work?", the man asked, distinct German accent in his speech, and I nodded with Shellfish.

We took positions on the rock fence as the Pirates advanced. There were five of them, one hanging back with an odd-looking machine gun. It was weird thing, like a Japanese World War 2 gun, while the other men had different AKs and Soviet-era submachine guns. The terrain was on our side, however, as the enemy had to advance over a very open hillside, but that was pretty much the only thing we had going for us. Or so I thought. Shellfish on my right had other plans. I saw him grab a bundle of red sticks from his belt, then stick them together into a big stack. He tossed his APS at me and told me to fire blind with both guns to keep the enemy down for a few seconds. Holding two rifle length guns on my hands was not the most efficient use of either, but I prodded them on the wall and let loose.

It was inaccurate as hell, but it made the Pirates duck down a bit. Just enough to allow Shellfish to do his thing. His lighter flashed in the corner of my eye, then he rose from cover just enough to toss the bundle of explosives. It tumbled down the hill, in to the midst of the Pirates. I could see one of them look at it with confusion that turned into understanding and then to horror. The explosion that followed this clouded the Pirate attackers completely, and when the dust settled, only torn limbs and bent guns remained. The threat to our rear had been removed from existence. I saw the medic finish up work on the wounded Guardian too, creating a splint for the broken leg and stitching up the shoulder wound.

"Nice work, Shellfish. We could've been toast if not for the dynamite.", I managed to say.

"There are few problems that cannot be solved with the use of large amounts of high-explosives.", Shellfish laughed.

Machine gun fire coming from the other side of the Selsovet reminded me that the battle was not over, but I decided to first investigate the Pirate gunner's corpse in hopes of getting a better weapon. I told Shellfish to cover me, then broke into a sprint towards the river. The machine gunner supporting the Pirate squad had been furthest from the blast, hiding behind an overturned boat, and had not been turned to atoms. However, as I came to realize when I met a spray of bullets, he had neither died yet. Leaning on the boat, he was clearly wounded but still not out of the fight. I managed to dodge the first, weak burst, and Shellfish replied in kind, flechettes striking the boat's side. The Pirate ducked down, and I switched to my Kedr, spraying the boat as well.

"Surrender, svoloch, or die. We got you pinned down, and we have a doctor who can fix up your wounds if you give up. Your buddies are in pieces, you sure you want to join them?", I screamed in between bursts.

No reply for a moment. Then, after one more burst, I saw the Pirate gunner raise his hands up. I told him to step out of cover, and he did, limping with a bullet hole in the leg. I took his machine gun and ammo, on closer inspection I realized it to be a North Korean Type 73 of all things. I escorted him up the hill, the man looking like a beaten dog, and asked the greensuited medic to help his wound. Shellfish objected, telling me to just shoot the bandit bastard. Call me a naive idiot, but I couldn't bring myself to execute a man that had surrendered, and the medic stood with me on this. I argued that he could tell us more about Pirate actions in Torfprom, and finally Shellfish threw his hands up and told me to keep my prisoner then.

The medic told us that he'd keep an eye on the Pirate as Shellfish suggested we join the fight on the other side. I loaded the machine gun and nodded, feeling more confident on the fight now that I had an automatic weapon other than the poxy Kedr. We rushed through the house to the yard, where Guard had began a push. Only now did I realize that on the field in front of the Selsovet was an anomaly field with weird, large crystals and Electro anomalies. The enemy force was retreating, dressed in red, orange and black trenchcoats, green and orange CS-type suits and big crimson-orange exoskeletons. There were roughly ten of them, with seven corpses on the field. I put down the bipod on the rock wall and opened fire. First burst missed by twenty metres, another got closer as I adjusted my aim. Third time was the charm as I hit the big exoskeleton-suited guy. The heavy 7.62x54 rounds struck him like a truck, and he did not get up anymore. Good thing nobody aimed at me with my shit aim.

I kept on firing until the machine gun ran dry, which wasn't really that long as it only had a box magazine. Thankfully the Pirate I had captured had preloaded magazines, so I simply swapped to a new one and began harassing the retreating enemies. Not that I hit much, I was still learning to use this thing, but Seriy, Shellfish and the surviving Guardians and stalkers harried the enemy until they broke into a full retreat. With a final, wild battlecry, the Guard stalkers rushed after them into a small hill with a windmill, killing one last foe before the others managed to escape. Victory was ours, but it had been a costly one. Guard had lost six men in the base and three more were woundes, among the dead were two stalkers who had had the courage to fight. Seriy was fuming at the cowards and the enemies, dragging one of their wounded to the base.

He tied the man into a one of the poles housing large lights at the edges of the camp, then brought three guys from Guard into an execution formation in front of the wounded survivor. Seriy began demanding answers, who the enemies were, why they attacked Guard, what was their goal here. The man refused to speak, but then the Guard troopers began firing. Deadly accurate rifle fire from their FN2000s and FALs was very terrifying to witness, as they drilled holes into the pole mere millimetres from the man's limbs, ears and other bodyparts. He cried out from sheer surprise, equally continued by his confusion that he was still alive. Seriy repeated the question, telling the captive that next salvo would hit his knees, abdomen and ears, leading to a slow and painful death.

The prisoner became a lot more talkative then. He explained that the attackers were from the faction Eclipse, made originally by a small group of Clear Sky survivors who sought to find a way to control the Zone in a far more comprehensive manner than Lebedev had intended to do in 2011. They had found some information of a program aimed at this sort of thing from lab X-6. However, due to their small nature, the leader of Eclipse, Crescent, had tried to capture territory for the faction, and the Guard outpost was one of the unlucky targets.

"We're usually quite neutral to other factions, but desperate times call for desperate measures as we had few resources and little manpower to continue our search.", the man said.

"So you're willing to attack a neutral outpost simply for the sake of more resources, yet claim to be doing this all for a higher goal? Utter hypocrisy. And you allied with the Pirates of all people to do it?", Seriy said, contempt in his voice.

"It was an alliance of convenience. As I said, we lack manpower and Pirates were willing to help us in exchange of stalker captives. This was nothing more than a skirmish in the larger faction wars, today we are enemies, tomorrow maybe allie-", the Eclipse stalker defended his cause, but Seriy had had enough.

He turned his back to the prisoner and the three Guardians fired once, executing the prisoner. I was a bit shocked by this action, but it was true that the attack from Eclipse had been loathsome. One of the Guard guys approached me, telling me that he had been going through the pockets of the fallen Eclipse stalkers and found some notes and documents there that he thought I could use in my writing. I thanked him by giving him my Kedr. It was already beginning to be useless and I now had a better automatic weapon. I read through the notes, which detailed the failed research experiments into something called the Noosphere and C-Conciousness. There was also mentions of an entity named the Group, which I had heard rumours before and Besomar, the Dark Stalker leader, had mentioned in Rustriver. Apparently the name Eclipse came from the belief that this faction would one day eclipse the C-Conciousness and take their place.

"What a load of bullshit. C-Conciousness? Noosphere? They have a ton of random number generators crunching numbers to see if humans have some sort of common field of energy? Fucking hell, what next, UFOs in the Zone?", I mumbled to myself while pocketing the papers.

I wanted to interview the Pirate for information on his faction as well, and thus went back to the backyard to see if he was still there. The Guard guys had gathered in the hall, sharing stories of the battle and debriefing as well as sharing loot. There were a lot of guns, most of the French in origin, which was quite odd. FR-F2s, MAT-49s, MAS-49s, FAMAS rifles and Hecates. Truly rare combination. Still, many factions ordered guns from Contrabandists or traders, and given the demilitarization of the West as of late, many guns were flowing into black markets around the world. I entered the backyard only to find the LC-suited medic on the floor, massaging the back of his head.

"What happened?", I asked, searching for the Pirate.

"That scheißkerl managed to distract me just enough to smack me into the back of the head and make a break for it. No idea where he went. Still, I got some information out of him beforehand.", the medic replied.

"Never caught your name or faction by the way. I'm Chronicler. Could you share the information? I'm writing a story on the Zone's factions and anything is worthwhile to me.", I said, helping the medic up.

The man introduced himself as Donner from Visit, which he promised to explain later. According to the Pirate's tale told at gunpoint, they were bandits who had taken to the many rivers and swamps of the Zone to prey on settlements from unexpected directions. They liked attacking bases and camps in the middle of the night, using rowboats to silently approach them and then wiping out first line of defence with boat-mounted machine guns. They preyed on the Divers as well, and their main base was not far from Torfprom.

The base was a series of various ships and rafts going around them, with floating machine gun emplacements. They were crucial to Contrabandists as smugglers, and while there were few factions neutral to them, on the bandit scale they were not the worst around. They mostly just smuggled things into the Zone and fleeced Divers, diggers and other stalkers by the riverside, not going to the murderous heights of factions like Scum, Retribution or Avengers.

"Did he explain why they had North Korean guns? This machine gun is so weird.", I questioned, but Donner shook his head.

He said that the Pirate had said they were looking for stalkers to capture for workforce, apparently there was something to excavate inside the Torfprom factory area. I scratched my chin at this, Seriy would probably be interested in this information. Even to the Pirates, the alliance with Eclipse had been a temporary one, they considered the faction to be dangerous idealists. Donner finished that the Pirate had mentioned an ecologist camp on the northern side of Torfprom, which may have answers on the Torfprom facility secrets. I thanked Donner for the information, cursing the fact that the Pirate had gotten away. Finding their camp would've been valuable to Guard.

"Indeed. But eh, you win some, you lose some, as the Engländer say. Anyway, would you like to hear of Visit then? We could use some publicity?", Donner proposed, and I nodded, always looking for more to fill my book.