Earthfall (Book 2): Earthfall 2 [The Mission Continues]

by Knight, Stephen

  Without the drone, she never would have known the enemy rig was so close. Unfortunately, it cut both ways; the drone’s spinning rotors would return a “flicker” to the operating MMR’s receiver array. To the radar, the rotors would read like fluttering discs that would stand out due to their repetitive waveform. And the body of the UAV was hardly radar-absorbent either; while small, it still had a detectable radar cross-section that could never be confused with that of a bird’s. Those who had devised Harmony Base and the hardware it would employ had obviously decided that stealth tech wasn’t something they would need at the end of the world. After all, the mission of the base was to actually find survivors, not evade their detection. KC could hardly blame the base’s creators for not seeing something like this coming down the turnpike.

  She quickly reduced the drone’s elevation by five hundred feet. The millimeter wave radar warning receiver’s alarm disappeared, which told her that the rig was still several miles away and blocked by terrain. So too did the radio emissions. KC reviewed the data log, including the FLIR footage. Once the emissions had been detected, the drone had slewed its small forward-looking infrared turret toward the potential point of incidence. Nothing overt was revealed, like a file of armed soldiers streaming toward Sherwood. In fact, nothing out of the ordinary appeared at all. She studied the electromagnetic captures. For sure, encrypted frequencies used by the SCEV field teams had been detected, all based on the SINCGARS technology that had proliferated through the military in the 2000s. There were other captures as well, from handsets most likely that had been found or created after the war. One particularly weak signal caught her attention, just because it occupied a portion of the spectrum that was radically different from the others. One hundred twenty-nine megahertz was the frequency, on a bandwidth of around five thousand hertz. KC rubbed her chin. She felt she should know that …

  VCARS? she asked herself. Is that the same freq VCARS uses? The Vehicle Communications and Reporting System was a diagnostics tool that sent engine system information to a satellite which was long gone. That information would then be downloaded by Honeywell as part of the extended maintenance contract the manufacturer had with the Department of Defense. The communications modules had been baked into the SCEV’s engines, and they were so nonessential to rig operations that KC had forgotten all about them. But now they were keen on her mind, because there was no way to turn them off without physically pulling the module’s power harness. They were only functional while the engines were running, which meant that an SCEV—or a vehicle with the same highly efficient turboshaft engines manufactured by Honeywell—was out there and operational.

  Shit, can I read the data? She had thought she would cross-check the frequency information with the technical guides in the rig’s database, but the new thought supplanted that. Depending on the purity of the data grab she’d snatched, she could learn a lot about the engine system running out there in the darkness, from software build version to turbine output temperature. There wouldn’t be any positioning data in the stream, but she could absolutely solve the riddle of what engines were out there, which would help them determine what machine they were installed in ...

  But first, she had to convey this information to the rest of the team. The SCEV was under strict EMCON, so she couldn’t do the expedient thing and call them up on the radio. Nor could she resort to more basic things—flash the lights, shout out over the PA, or lean on the air horn—which the SCEV had. All of those would get attention, but not necessarily the kind she wanted. She thought about pulling the drone out of its hover and flying it around at street level, but that was about as inefficient as smoke signals. And she couldn’t leave the rig unattended; the sergeant major had made that known with his own direct orders. Just in case the people of Sherwood were coveting the rig, it would serve them well to take her down as soon as she exited. KC didn’t seriously think there was much risk of that, but the sarmajor had seen some serious shit in his ancient life, and she figured she didn’t want to be added to the list of people who thought they knew more than he did about things involving skullduggery.

  She opened a window that connected her to the FLIR turret system. Using that, she slewed the device to the left. There were people standing a hundred or so feet away from the rig. They carried firearms, of course; the community was nervous, and everyone was manning up with whatever firepower they had. The group of three consisted of one man and two women, so great was the FLIR’s fidelity. They were dressed appropriately for the cooling night, and they were obviously standing around talking to each other. Their backs were turned toward the SCEV. KC felt they were there to watch the rig, but they obviously didn’t think it was something to worry about.

  “Yeah, they’ll do,” she said aloud. With a half-baked plan in hand, she got out of the command intel station’s seat and stepped over to the shield door. She left it open just long enough for her to pass through to the cockpit. The trio stood to the left of the vehicle, so she dropped into the pilot’s seat and grabbed the handle that allowed her to open the side port. It was heavy and resisted her efforts to pull back on it. She was puzzled by that for a moment, then remembered to pull the locking pin. After all, it wouldn’t do for the port to be accidentally opened while the rig was transiting through a belt of heavy radiation. She yanked the pin and let it dangle from its wire retainer, then yanked on the handle again. The side port opened quite easily, sliding back into its recess. A tinny warning alarm sounded, and KC mashed down on the master caution reset switch on the forward panel. The alarm died immediately as cool air seeped into the cockpit, bringing with it the scents of the outside world. She momentarily savored the smell of wet earth, and felt the cool dryness of air that hadn’t been subjected to HEPA filtering.

  “Hey, guys! Can one of you come over here, please?” she called out into the darkness.

  “What do you need?” came the response a moment later. It was the male of the group, and his momentary hesitation told KC he was surprised to hear the sudden voice in the night.

  “I need one of you to get someone from the team back here,” KC said. “I really need to talk with them.”

  A figure floated through the inky darkness, swimming toward the SCEV. The man appeared, holding his AR in both hands as he looked up at her. Sitting in the cockpit, KC’s face was a good eight feet above ground level so she couldn’t make out much of his features.

  “Hey, you’re the girl who doesn’t come out much, right?” the guy asked.

  The question confused KC. “Who the hell else would I be?”

  “How come you never get to come outside?”

  “I’m the junior member of the team. Listen, guy, I really need you to get my commanding officer or one of the other team members out here. Can you do that? They’re with Mr. Buchek,” KC said. “It’s really, really important.”

  “What is it?” another voice asked from the darkness. This one was female, and KC saw two other figures drifting toward the vehicle. They were illuminated only by starlight and a crescent moon overhead, so their features were vague and indistinct. KC was mindful of the fact they all carried weapons, and she began easing the side port closed.

  “They’ll tell you what you need to know,” she said. “Please have one of them come back to the rig. I have to go.” With that, she slammed the side port closed and reinserted the locking pin. Even if they wanted to get in, they wouldn’t be able to without some serious hardware.

  She returned to the command intel station and checked the drone’s current status. No new alerts had been flagged, but the encrypted radio traffic was still being logged. She hopped over to the engineering station and pulled over the VCARS data stream the drone had been able to capture. It was unencrypted, but one needed the right software to be able to extract the data, software she had available to her. She pulled it into the diagnostics app and viewed it. Sure enough: Honeywell HTS1200 series engines, block modification four—the same as those under the rear deck of SCEV Four—running at on
e thousand thirteen C. Total time of six hundred three hours. Current turbine output was unreadable, as the data wasn’t fully captured. Last maintenance time was the same, blade condition and configuration also unavailable, but at that turbine output KC knew the target’s engines were under low demand. It was moving, not idling. It wasn’t much, but it was a start.

  I gotta disable our modules, she thought. It would mean opening the rear deck in the sleeping compartment so she could access the engines long enough to pull the data harnesses from the modules. They were accessible from the top of the engines, so it wasn’t a big job. It would be a pain in the ass to crack the deck, but it was the only way.

  It must have taken longer to review the data than she’d thought, because she was startled when the outer airlock alarm sounded. KC checked the airlock camera and saw it was only Leona entering; there was no sign of Andrews or Mulligan. Just the same, she put her hand on the butt of the pistol she still wore and waited for the inner airlock to cycle open.

  “What’s up?” Leona asked when she stepped inside. She sealed the airlock behind her and pulled her rifle off her shoulder.

  KC told her what the drone had picked up, and referred her to the captured data. Leona sat down at the station and prepared to review it.

  “If they’re this close to us, we definitely need to move the rig,” she said.

  “We can’t yet. I have to pull the power to the VCARS modules, otherwise they’ll start transmitting when we start up.”

  Leona nodded. “Right. How long will it take?”

  “Most of the work is going to be getting to the modules. Actually pulling the wire harness is like ten seconds,” KC told her.

  Leona considered that. “Okay. Let’s get to it. Do you need me to help you?”

  KC wondered if the lieutenant had actually ever spent a lot of time in an SCEV’s engine bay. “No, not really ... it’s going to take the same amount of time, basically.”

  “So to confirm, I’m good to review the data here and make a report to Andrews while you disconnect the transmitters on the engines?” Leona asked.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Leona pointed at the display. “Can you give me your opinion on why the bad guys haven’t disconnected their call homes? Looks like they’re not transmitting transponder data, so they knew to shut that down.”

  KC thought about that for a moment. “Because they’re like the rest of you,” she said finally. “They’re trigger pullers who don’t know the ins-and-outs of an SCEV. They might know how to drive them and fight them and live in them, but they don’t really know how they work aside from whatever it takes to keep them running in the field.”

  Leona looked at her and gave her a sly smile. “You saying I don’t know my shit here, Sergeant Winters?”

  “In this instance? Yes,” KC said.

  Leona glared at KC for a long moment, then smiled again as she turned back to the displays before her. “I’ll give you points for not sugarcoating the truth, Winters.”

  “Don’t mean any offense, LT. But the thing is, you need to listen to me on this one.”

  Leona nodded. “I am. I hear you loud and clear, Winters. You do what you need to do—we’re definitely going to have to move the rig. These guys aren’t within immediate shooting distance, but they might be soon. You need to help us get underway without anyone being able to detect us electronically.”

  “Got it, LT. You going to take this back to the captain and the sarmajor?” KC nodded toward the displays.

  “Once I get a handle on what you’ve intercepted? Hell, yes.”

  “Listen to the sarmajor,” KC said. “Even if he says something different than the captain. He totally knows this shit.”

  It wasn’t until after she’d said it that KC thought it was probably a stupid way to approach things. Leona looked at her for a long moment, and KC was convinced in that span of time that she’d majorly overstepped a boundary she should have been able to see.

  “I always listen to the sergeant major,” Leona said finally. “He saved my ass in San Jose, and he saved it again right outside of Harmony.”

  “Yeah, I heard that. So you and the sarmajor ... you’re a thing?”

  “You’re only just figuring that out?”

  “No, no. I’d already thought that. I was just ...”

  Leona looked at KC critically. “Anything you want to ask, Winters?”

  KC cleared her throat. “Dunno? I mean ... what’s it like?”

  Leona looked at her for a moment and tilted her head to one side. “What’s what like?”

  “You know, with one of them. An older guy. The Old Guard.”

  Leona laughed and looked back at the displays. KC knew the question had embarrassed her, and she figured this probably wasn’t something one should ask a superior officer. But for some reason, she thought it was mostly all right. Leona Eklund wasn’t acting like such a stuck-up hard ass at the moment, and KC figured she should ride that horse for as long as it would trot.

  “I guess it’s just like being with a younger guy,” Leona said finally. “Except he knows what he’s doing, and how it should be done. Younger guys have no clue, but they do it all night long.”

  KC laughed at that, surprised at her own boldness as well as Leona’s answer. “Cool. Well, so long as everyone’s enjoying themselves. So I’ll get started on those modules.”

  “Sure you don’t need me to help you?” Leona asked. She was already rolling through the data the drone had collected. KC could tell she was entering the analysis zone and had asked the question automatically. That was fine from where KC sat. The data was more important than inactivating the modules.

  “I’m good, LT. So long as I get those modules stood down before we have to start the rig—but I need to get it done soon, just in case the bad guys start sending drones our way.”

  “Roger that,” Leona replied, her face illuminated by the glow from the displays before her. She didn’t look up and didn’t say anything further, so KC pulled her tool belt from her locker and moved into the sleeping compartment. Just like the lieutenant, she had work to do.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Leona returned to the bar almost two hours later. She carried printouts and walked Andrews, Mulligan, Buchek, Griffith, and the others through the quick intel slice KC had captured with the drone. That the other party out in the darkness was using an SCEV was now without question; while no transponder data had been detected, the information harvested from the VCARS in conjunction with the millimeter wave radar pulse and the fragmentary communications filled in the blanks.

  “So they’re using TAC seven,” Andrews said.

  “That’s one of your frequency designations?” Griffith asked.

  “Yes. It’s not a cardinal freq though, usually reserved for overload commo in the event there’s a ton of chatter going on in the field.” Andrews looked at Leona. “You able to decode it?”

  Leona nodded. “They’re smart, using a deep freq, but there are only so many ways to encrypt it, and we can listen in on them when they’re transmitting.”

  “You were able to hear them?” Buchek asked.

  “Only a fragment,” Leona said. She reached into one of the cargo pockets on her trousers and pulled out her tablet. She looked at Andrews. “I’ll share the audio?”

  “Go for it. Let’s hear what they had to say.”

  Leona unlocked the tablet and deployed its kickstand. She positioned it in the center of the table, then tapped a button on its display. An audio spectrum display pulsed as a static-filled voice spoke over the tablet’s embedded speakers.

  “—zero contacts on the ground. Orient left to two-six-two—”

  The audio meters flatlined after that. Buchek and Griffith looked around the room at the other people hovering around the table.

  “Uh, is that it?” Buchek asked.

  “The drone was caught in a radar sweep,” Leona said. “Our crew chief had to drop it back to five hundred feet above ground level to avoi
d it being detected. That’s all we were able to recover from the intercept.”

  “How long was the drone strobed for?” Mulligan asked.

  “Less than five seconds. Just a hair over three, actually.”

  Mulligan pushed away from the table and got to his feet. “Okay, that’s enough to get a read-back on the vehicle. If they saw the rotor flutter, they’ll know what’s up. Captain, I’m headed outside. I want to walk the perimeter and take a look around.”

  “We’re not done here, Scott,” Leona said.

  “You have more bad news?” Mulligan asked. “Because if you don’t, then I want to get out there and see what I can see. These guys aren’t far enough away for us to sleep tight.”

  “Sarmajor, take these two men with you.” Griffith pointed at an older man with a deeply lined face and eyes so dark they appeared to be almost black, and a younger guy who wasn’t much more than a teenager. He had a wicked scar on his forehead and hair that was dark and of the consistency of a Brillo pad. “They know the lay of the land and can guide you through the entire settlement in complete darkness.”

  Mulligan reached down and opened his rucksack. “Not really worried about that.” He pulled out a hard case and opened it. From that he removed what appeared to be a wide set of eyeglasses minus earpieces. He clipped the unit to the brim of his helmet. Griffith snorted.

  “And here we were all happy you gave us a set of gen seven goggles,” he said. “Now you go out and show off your broad-band night vision display system. I’ll bet it sees into the infrared spectrum and displays color imagery too, right?”

  “Does more than that, but without being able to connect to the rig via commo, a lot of that functionality is chopped off,” Mulligan said. “And before you get your devil dog ass all chapped over it, we only have enough of these for crew only.” He looked down at Andrews as he swung into his ruck. “Sir?”

  “Don’t leave the settlement, Sarmajor,” Andrews said. “No matter what you see or hear, do not expose yourself to anyone outside the walls. Obviously if you see a shit storm headed our way, tell us ... but don’t get involved directly. Clear?”