The dark plumes of smoke rising into the heavens like the rage of Pele, Hawaii’s fiery volcano goddess, could be seen even from ground level. Ribbons and jet streams scarred the blue sky, marking them with their eloquent picture of violence. Writ large, they told the story of multiple missile salvos and futile impacts that drifted lazily, like ephemeral party favors at a child’s birthday celebration.
The stench of destruction was unavoidable. The odorous mix of burning oil, charred concrete, and ashen wood tainted the onshore sea breeze.
Snake couldn’t form words. His tongue locked in his mouth and his jaw completely slack. He’d never been in a battle like this before. Sarge’s expression remained placid, as if this was just another day at the office, and China maintained an air of alertness as the group sheltered behind the bulk of freeway jersey stacks while they watched the Americans get smashed.
Snake had only seen the brief video footage of New York and what the Royals did there. He’d felt upset and scared watching the footage. Watching destruction on this scale as it unfolded made his knees feel like water and his bladder weak.
One close call was enough. The remains of a jet slammed into the block they were hiding inside and nearly incinerated them. Bricks and stucco came down like several-pound confetti as they ran ahead of a flaming jet-fuel spill that would take an industrial hazmat team to put out.
Even leaping behind a car did little to save his ears and his lungs as unexploded ordnance from the planes detonated, shredding everything not already destroyed by the impact. From there they looked across the wide and deserted road towards the bay, where the true horror was revealed in the sky.
“Bloody hell,” muttered Snake, managing to choke back the emotion that swept through him at the sight of the results.
He had to admit: the American military might specialize in brute force in a bad way, but when they brought that brute force to the fore, it was awe-inspiring to witness. Several times, the frigate was completely shrouded in smoke, shrapnel, and flame. The concussions flattened the ocean waves nearly 300 meters beneath. Still the damned frigate flew, and still she retaliated with a vicious ferocity. Bigger than every ocean-going vessel that engaged it, it loomed like a grizzly bear attacked by Pomeranians. Black and silver mixed with the deep booming that made the air shiver even this far away, providing a hellish lightshow, all punctuated by orange explosions of missiles, aircraft, and naval ships.
When it was obvious that the Americans were defeated, and the death toll had to number in the thousands—if not tens of thousands, Sarge gave the order to transfer. Snake shook his head numbly. He doubled over with a sudden wave of nausea and had to abandon the first attempt to empty his stomach before he could manage to shakily resume the transfer sequence.
He knew they were going to another location with a big military base. He just hoped he wouldn’t have to witness something like this again. With tears in his eyes and a tremor in his voice as he sang, Snake began the harmonic sequence to transfer them. They had agreed to a spot more to his liking. A city not as big as New York, with a large military presence and a lot of uninhabited space around it: El Paso, Texas.
The battle at Ilya’s Isles severely depleted the battery system once again. Anna fretted as she stepped into the room containing Thalia’s control core. Even reduced to one operational main gun, the ship was more than capable of defending itself against the primitive weapons of this timeline, but these Rebels were resourceful. First New York, now here. This tactic could work.
Yet the harmonic transfer unit she’d seen in their possession wasn’t large enough to contain significant battery storage. They must be running low. They couldn’t compete with the massive battery storage of The Songstress. If they could only reduce the trace times for the quantum tag, they could short-circuit these ambush tactics employed by the Rebels.
Anna stepped into the service room outside Thalia’s secondary memory array, the door dilating at her vocal command.
“Countess. Can I assist you with anything?” Thalia asked, her form flickering into existence as beams of light in the room congregated to create her holographic form.
Anna nodded. “These satellites you spoke of earlier, the ones bouncing radio wave signals from just beyond the atmosphere—can we utilize them?”
Thalia replied in soothing tones, “I believe we can, Countess. I have deciphered many of their signals. Their signals are far more primitive than our own gespen receivers. Quite a few do not seem to require much more than the correct technical reference key to understand. Though my construction is not strictly compatible with these signals, much like their cable-based computer technology, my cognitive capacity allows me to partially circumvent the need for such direct methods. With the adjustments you performed earlier to the main communications array, I was able to interface and utilize these signals at around eighty-three percent efficiency. I have found that they use some of these signals to track us. And also to communicate in a network that extends around the planet. The latter do not seem to be military-grade in either style or encryption.”
“While interesting, that’s not quite what I mean, Thalia. Though, you said you can decipher their signals? Can we leverage them to fool our enemies, or perhaps eavesdrop?”
“I am working on it as a background process with some measure of success. Certain signals are heavily encrypted using multiple means. I suspect these to be hidden military signals buried within the other data traffic. Should I investigate further?” enquired the AI with a lift of her etheric blue eyebrows.
“Make that process of interception and decryption of the suspected military signals the second-highest priority process after the ship’s immediate survival.” Anna smiled wide as Thalia bowed in acknowledgement. Your very tools of the hunt will belong to us. Time for the trap-setter to be ensnared in their own nets.
While awaiting Thalia’s results, Anna found time to peruse the crew work, oversee a few major repairs, and even managed to grab a sandwich in the mess hall. She had just started repairs on some of the drone systems when the AI interrupted her. Thalia flickered into the room. “My Lady, I’ve managed to find a way to use the existing system to our advantage.”
“In what way?” Anna questioned.
“I mapped significant data traffic through the global network and discovered that much of the system routes through the Northern American continent. A significant proportion of global traffic moves through this geographic location because of financial motivations. Within this routing, I identified a system purely designed to monitor this data, identified as PRISM. I concentrated my efforts on this system and discovered a keyword search that identifies the locations the Rebels have already visited. Additionally, the Rebels are collaborating with the Americans. They’ve outlined their next several intended locations of transfer to provide the Americans preparation time to engage us.”
Anna grinned. “So we not only know where they are now, but where they are going to be. Excellent work, Thalia.” She took only a few moments to review Thalia’s findings before contacting Heinrich.
“Sire, we have them.”
The fourth cave entrance lurked on a north-facing slope, almost buried under a stand of pine and brush, with a band of boulders above her at the top of the ridge. Barkless pine saplings littered the area like discarded toys tossed by an errant wind that held a hint of musky, dried clover. An inky, triangular wedge disappeared back into the slope.
That doesn’t look inviting. And what’s been gnawing on the trees, beavers?
Jay shrugged her aching shoulders, hearing the water slosh in the bottle strapped to the side of her pack. She snagged it, taking small sips of the icy water and hearing past lessons from her Mom about staying hydrated.
Thirst quenched, she took the pack off entirely and removed the squealer. Normally she’d do this inside, but something about that cave sent whispers along her senses. Her precognition was twitchy, so she never relied on it. However, she closed her eyes and sampled the surrounding
mindscape.
Nothing bright, just a faint whisper of focus some distance to the south-west. Probably a predator after a meal. It has that kind of feel.
A gust of wind made her shiver, a chill feeling of sweat between her shoulder blades, and she re-covered her face. She felt cold everywhere, which was a good sign; she risked frostbite in these conditions. Moving around helped keep the blood flowing, but now that she was stationary the wind bit. She needed warmth and sleep before tackling the cave. With any luck, the squealer would be able to map the entire cave system while she slept.
“All right little fella, let’s do this.” It made her feel less alone in this cold, lifeless place to talk to the small machine.
She activated the squealer, which made a satisfied brap! noise, and gently lobbed it into the cave entrance. She studied the display as the mapper activated, showing the entrance in more detail. Ten feet beyond the cave opening and it bisected into two tunnels heading off at acute angles.
She couldn’t see anything on the display that would account for her trepidation. She crossed the distance and hesitantly ducked in out of the wind. The cave was low and she stooped over, listening and waiting as her eyes adjusted to the dim light.
She checked the mindscape again. Nothing overt, but her empathy detected the faintest of tickles, a tiny feeling of contentment. She slipped a hover out of her pocket and keyed it. The small mobile light source pulsed to life and started shadowing her as she moved forward to where the squealer floated, orientating itself and performing some kind of systems check, by the looks of things.
“Not ready to head off yet?” she asked it.
Jay slipped the pack from her back and laid it on the ground. The microbag inside it made it the softest thing to sit on and her legs were shaking from the brutal passage she’d taken to get here. “I don’t think Mom and Dad had this in mind when we took all those long walks around the base when I was little,” she rambled as she started massaging her thighs and calf muscles.
She unwrapped her scarf, noticing that the scent of winter-dried clover seemed stronger in here. “Mind you, considering Dad started teaching me tai chi when I was small, perhaps they did.”
She took out a chocolate bar. After three caves, she was sick of the damned things. She checked the display. The squealer was still processing data from its diagnostic. She looked at the optic sensors; if she squinted they could resemble a set of curious eyes, and it was nice to pretend she had someone to talk to. It was too quiet in her head.
She’d never felt so isolated before.
She’d been alone, when Mom and Dad got called away on missions, but never this alone. They usually made her stay at the base in Florida. Even then she was still aware of people around her all the time. Around others, errant thoughts flashed across the mindscape if she didn’t shield, but in this place, it didn’t even feel like a shield was necessary. There was no one around to overhear.
The squealer finished whatever it was doing and made a noise like a wet fart before heading down the right-hand passage.
“Yeah, break’s over. You’re a hard taskmaster, squealer. You take the right tunnel, I’ll do the left one, find a place to sleep.” Jay got to her feet. She was glad she’d taken her pack off; the left passageway had a large boulder that jutted out into the curved, rock tunnel.
Sliding past the obstructing boulder revealed a long, wide tunnel, floored in slippery ice that crunched beneath her boots. Her precognition wasn’t giving her any flashes of insight, but stomach butterflies gamboled inside her. Eyes and mind alert, she continued forward, heart thudding in her chest as her sense of trepidation increased with every step.
Something is making me feel this. She took a knee and accessed the hover through the display, sending it down the tunnel and increasing its illumination. As the small light zipped forward with a buzzing sound, holes were revealed in the walls. Some large enough to fit a small car, others only a hand-width in diameter.
The hover stopped when it reached the end of the small tunnel, about fifty feet from where she knelt. She couldn’t be sure, but the shape of the slope at the end of the tunnel indicated that there may be a gallery above this tunnel, where meltwater had washed away the oat-colored rock.
She keyed the display to bring the hover back slowly. At the half-way mark, she caught the first flash. From her empathy. An animalistic sense of fear and anger. Oh no.
The hulking shadow emerged partway from its chosen den, filling the narrow passageway with an echoing roar as it took a swipe at the bright hover. The light smashed against the rock, and the bear turned its head to the only other light source in the dark cave: the light of the display in Jay’s hand. A single, snorting whiff of air and the bear roared a challenge and charged while the mewling cries of cubs sounded in the background.
As the distorted sounds of country music played softly through his ear buds, Philippe swore and pulled the offending things out. Deliberate signal jamming. They’d tried switching signal frequencies but no joy; the jamming was occurring on multiple channels. They’d have to find the transmitter if they wanted to communicate with the rest of the unit, and the only lead they had were the tracks that led them here, inside the target reconnaissance area.
“Comms are still black,” Philippe muttered softly to Sacks.
Captain Tremblay had commanded him to investigate the tracks and split the unit, most to continue to their objective and a four-man team to follow the tracks and report back. With comms down, he wasn’t even able to do that.
“That is fucked up,” Sacks commented, adjusting polarized binoculars to examine the box valley below. It was dense with pine, the snow-covered trees effectively obscuring any details deep within the small valley.
This kind of folded, mountainous terrain normally played havoc with comms. With the throat mic nestled around his neck jammed, it just felt like a noose. A feeling in his bones, a whisper from his ancestors, told him they’d gone from being the hunters to being hunted.
“The tracks just continue into there?” he asked.
“Affirmative. Straight as a fucking arrow. You get the feeling we’re being led into a trap?”
Philippe grunted his assent, but without a way to communicate, the four-man team were on their own. “Fucking comms. We have to find that transmitter. Without comms we have no way of letting the rest of the squad know someone’s screwing with us.”
He turned to Casper, the youngest member of Fox Squad but an experienced outdoorsman and probably the sneakiest member of the unit aside from himself. “Think you can make that ridge at three o’clock without drawing attention?”
“I’ll be as quiet as the ghost of a dead cat, eh,” Casper replied with an answering grin. “Let’s flank this asshole and give ‘er.”
“Do it. We’ll give you twenty to get into position and then Hamm and I’ll make a dash for the trees. You and Sacks watch our six. I don’t feel like getting shot today—and remember the squad motto.”
Casper nodded. “Never use a small caliber bullet for a large caliber man,” he recited before dumping his heavy pack into a snowbank. He strapped on snowshoes before setting off.
Philippe watched him for a moment before turning to the other members of the small squad. “How you feelin’, Hamm?” he asked, taking out his sidearm and checking the action hadn’t frozen in the wintry conditions.
“Tight Sir,” Hamm replied also taking out his sidearm. The Tac-50s were too large and slow to use in tight confines, they’d be better off using the handguns.
Right now, Philippe just wished body armor was part of the sniper unit’s tactical gear. Attacking a position like this wasn’t what his unit was designed for. Would dearly love to call in an airstrike.
“Who do you think it is?” Sacks asked.
Philippe had thought about that as well and hadn’t come up with any answers. “We’ll ask if we get the chance, right now I’m in a shoot-first-ask-questions-later mood.”
“Rules of engagement?” Hamm asked.
“If you check your ROE card we have authorized targets. This interference isn’t civilian, not on a secure military channel. That means opposing military. Our objective is that transmitter, without comms to the squad we’re in the fog of war and don’t know what the fuck is going on. If we are opposed in our objective, we return with due force.”
“So if I see a head without hands held high, I’ll perforate it. Understood,” Sacks said, nodding and smiling. “If you die, can I have your car? I always wanted a shitbox like yours.”
Philippe could tell Sacks was just trying to lessen the tension. He knew how dangerous it would be to run towards those trees if an enemy combatant was holed up in there, just waiting for some idiot like him to try and draw fire. He was putting his life in the hands of Sacks and Casper to find any enemy combatants before he was killed. But he trusted these men with his life.
“Sure. You’ll have to finish the payments though,” Phil replied.
“Nice. Maybe I will, just as something to remember you by.”
Hamm chuckled, “You can be such an asshole, Sacks. Tell you what, if it’s my time and you want debt, give Sarah a call. She’s got expensive tastes. She keeps renovating.”
“Maybe she’s nesting,” Sacks grinned evilly. “Hamm Junior on the way maybe? But I challenge that expensive taste—or why’d she marry your broke ass?”
“I’m a Viking in the bedroom.”
Phil snorted, and then nudged Hamm. “Let’s take this gully down to there.” He pointed out the route, keeping to as much cover as they could manage. “Shortest distance to the tree line.”
“Phil. Run fast. Run stealthy. Another NCO might not like me as much,” Sacks said seriously.
As the bear’s claws got uncomfortably close again, Jay pushed it back and tried to communicate once more. “C’mon big momma, I don’t want to hurt you, settle down,” she said in a calm, firm tone. She crouched, back to the boulder, presenting as small a target as possible, her posture submissive to the big animal. Maintain eye contact, bears will stop attacking when they don’t perceive you as a threat. It was all well in theory, but with the boulder behind her and the cubs the bear was protecting, Jay couldn’t extricate herself.
Suffrage (World Key Chronicles Book 1) Page 23
