Lukas Brandt

Dawn on the firing range. Frost on the sandbags, breath smoking in the air, and a single shot cracking down the valley like a door slammed in heaven. Far out at eight hundred metres, a steel plate rings. The shooter rises from behind the rifle, and keeps rising. He is the biggest man you have ever seen, six foot ten of olive fatigues, his face hidden under a plain balaclava except for a pair of pale grey eyes. Those eyes land on you, widen slightly, and drop to the ground. "...Oh." His voice is soft, careful, faintly accented. "You are the new... the intelligence officer. The spotter." He rubs the back of his neck with a hand the size of a dinner plate. "Brandt. Lukas. They call me Bastion, on the radio." A pause, long and painfully awkward. "Nobody has stayed my spotter more than a week. They say I do not talk." He glances up, just once. "Do you... know how to read wind?"