by Rick Barba
Petrov said, “One is a male sniper who kills Reapers and leaves a survivor from each massacre to bear witness. The other is a female sword-master who kills Skirmishers and leaves etchings of herself but no survivors.”
“And both of the recent attacks occurred at the same time, a hundred and twenty miles apart,” added Darox.
“I see you’ve compared notes,” said Thibideaux.
“They’re not the same freak, Captain,” said Petrov.
“XCOM intel agrees,” nodded Thibideaux as he stood back up. “But I wanted to check with you.” In the flickering firelight, age and weariness seemed etched deeper around his eyes. “Your activities out here in the Wild Lands have attracted attention at the highest levels of the alien food chain. The Elders have gone and engineered goddamned super-soldiers to counter the threat you clearly pose.”
Then Captain Thibideaux grinned. “Kids, I find that oddly encouraging, don’t you?”
* * *
Two hours later, as Danny Roman poured soda over ice, Dr. Marin noticed a slight tremor in the bartender’s hand.
Earlier, when Marin had arrived at the ship’s lounge, Lieutenant Roman had been standing behind the empty bar, arms crossed, staring into space. It was the first time that Marin had ever seen Danny in any sort of repose; when the Grenadier wasn’t chatting, he always kept busy behind the bar. His eyes seemed veiled and dark in a way that Marin hadn’t seen before, too.
“Got any new stories for me?” asked Marin.
“Nah,” said Danny. “Same old stories. They just keep happening over and over.”
Marin raised his glass. “Cheers,” he said.
Now Danny smiled. He relaxed his stance a bit and leaned on the bar.
“I hear things are hopping down in the lab,” he said.
Marin took a long swallow of soda, then wiped his mouth and nodded. “My kids just got back from the site,” he said. “Your team’s work there was so clean, it gave us a ton of data to look at.”
“It was clean,” nodded Danny. “Yeah, a clean operation. Just a few glitches.”
Then Marin remembered: Lieutenant Roman was Bravo squad leader. Bravo had suffered three of XCOM’s four KIA casualties in the quarry assault, all due to the blistering Gauss fire of the ADVENT robotic turrets. Marin now realized that Danny had been staring at the Memorial—the far wall of the bar, covered with photos of XCOM’s fallen.
“Hey, something just hit me,” said Marin.
“An epiphany, doc?”
“Sure,” said Marin. “A realization.”
“Lay it on me.”
Marin twirled his glass in the wet spot on the bar.
He said, “Clearly, the aliens admire our species. It’s likely the only reason we’re still alive.”
“You think so?”
Marin nodded. “If they wanted Earth for something else—raw materials, minerals, whatever—they would have scrubbed humanity from the planetary ecosystem long ago. Especially given how combative we are.”
“We are a pain in the ass,” said Danny.
Marin rubbed his cheek. “Why else would they expend such enormous energy and resources to build the New Cities? Why are they trying so hard to make us content?” He shook his head. “It’s weird. Somehow we’re very important to them. They want something from us.”
Danny just leaned on the bar, listening.
“Now, I think our global political sellout twenty years ago probably led the Elders to a set of faulty conclusions about our culture,” continued Marin. “They think humans are craven and easy to manipulate.”
“Gosh, why would they think that?” asked Danny.
Marin grinned. “We may be a craven species, but you just kicked their ass up Yule Creek canyon,” he said. Then he got serious. “Hey, I was in the situation room, watching. Frankly, I wasn’t sure what I was seeing, but afterwards, Central explained it to me.”
“It was a bloody mess,” said Danny, staring down at his hands on the bar.
“A mess?” said Marin. “Central said Bravo squad took point at the hottest vector on the battlefield. You took the heat, killed the turrets, and secured the line. That’s why the rest of the strike force suffered such light casualties.”
Danny shrugged. “You do what you do,” he said.
“That’s right,” said Marin. “And so, my epiphany is this: I think it shocked the aliens. They vastly underestimated the extent of the Resistance. They had no idea we’d fight so hard to defend some remote mountainside. That’s why they haven’t come back.”
Danny smiled and started wiping the bartop. “You sound angry, doc,” he said.
“I am angry.” He stared down at his glass. “I’m mad as hell. And by the way, what your team did, that was heroic. I’ll never be that brave.”
Danny said, “Come on, doc.” He snapped his rag. “This war is like any other war. Sure, it’s nice having brave warriors on the battlefield. But Bravo squad is winning fights because of your lab.”
“What?” said Marin. “That’s not . . . that’s only partly true.”
Danny held up his fists. “Look, if we just fight like heroes, we lose. We have to fight smart. And have better gear.”
He pointed at Marin. “What you do, I could never do. I’ll never be that smart.”
Marin smiled. “I’m no smarter than you, pal,” he said.
“True,” said Danny. “But your pointy head is stuffed with a lot more . . . stuff.”
“Yes, it is,” said Marin, sliding off the barstool. “Okay, speaking of that, I gave myself a ten-minute break to clear my pointy head so I can be more productive.” He glanced at his watch. “Time’s up.”
As Marin stood, Lieutenant Roman reached across the bar and grabbed his shirt.
“One more thing,” said Danny. “If I ever hear an alcoholic who’s been sober seventeen years tell me he’s some kind of a coward . . . I’m going to punch him in the throat.”
“Duly noted,” said Marin.
Danny let go. “Please go save humanity some more,” he said.
* * *
Five minutes later, Marin stepped off the lift and walked into the lab to find Lopez and Gilmore working furiously at the main console. Dr. Tygan stood behind them, watching intently. As Marin approached, he heard the second lift’s door whoosh open behind him. He turned to see Bradford stride out with a brooding expression.
Lopez waved Marin over. “Tell me what I’m seeing, boss,” she called. “This is our first look. It’s insane.”
Marin approached and examined a map scan video. A large purple blob pulsated in an upper quadrant.
“My god, that’s the biggest signature I’ve ever seen,” he said. “Where is this?”
Lopez paused the playback. “Roaring Basin up in Summit County,” she said.
Bradford stepped up next to Marin. “I ordered a scan of the Omega Station site,” he said.
“Omega Station?” asked Marin, surprised. “Mox revealed its location?”
“He did,” said Bradford. “We’re prepping an infiltration team for the operation. Again, I wanted a scan to see what we’re up against.”
Marin nodded. “So . . . infiltration,” he said. “That means, like, sneaking in, right?”
“Right,” said Bradford. “Mox tells us Omega Station is practically a medieval mountain citadel, heavily fortified and defended. Our preliminary intel confirms that unpleasant fact. Even a successful capture mission would likely result in unacceptably high casualties.”
“Or possibly trigger a data-core self-destruct,” said Dr. Tygan.
“Exactly,” said Bradford. “This has to be a backdoor operation.” He pointed at the paused map scan. “So . . . what am I looking at?”
Marin squinted at the screen. “What’s your take, guys?” he asked his team.
“We just now compiled the scan video,” said Gilmore. “Like Bonnie said, it’s our first look.”
“That signature is huge,” said Lopez.
Tygan leaned in excitedly. “Do you t
hink that’s the Network Tower?” he asked. “Could we be that lucky?”
Marin stared hard at the screen.
“It is big,” he said. “But come on. What are the odds? Plus, I would expect ADVENT’s central conduit of psionic transmission to be more, you know . . . off-the-charts big.” He gestured to the screen. “Let it play, Bonnie.”
Lopez tapped a button, and the video resumed. The purple blotch continued to pulsate with an almost violent intensity. It burst outward in blooms from a central spine, like a Rorschach-style butterfly.
“Is this a single entity?” wondered Lopez.
Gilmore shrugged. “Maybe it’s a bunch of psionic guys in a house,” he said.
Lopez snorted a laugh. “Sorry,” she said, looking up at Bradford. “Not funny.”
Bradford patted her shoulder.
Tygan said, “Maybe it’s the same psionic group who intervened on our behalf up on Whitehouse Mountain?”
“Not likely,” said Marin. “This signature doesn’t match any of the other spectral readings we’ve confirmed for those appearances.”
After a few more seconds, the signature began to slowly migrate northward.
“My god, it’s walking away,” said Gilmore, rubbing his shaggy head.
“Okay, that’s . . . not a tower,” said Lopez.
THREE SMALL TEAMS—one XCOM, one Reaper, and one Skirmisher—dropped into a secluded canyon off Indigo Pass just half a click south of Omega Station. The rift was so narrow that the Skyrangers couldn’t risk landing in it. Instead, the squads used fast-rope insertion to reach the floor.
When Darox hit the ground, he called for a quick check-in from his fireteam.
“Weapons ready,” said Mahnk, giving his Kal-7 a quick pump.
“I am good to go,” said Rika.
Koros was still recovering in the Avenger medical bay from the Chryssalid poison. His replacement was a Red Wolf tribe veteran named Drask Calopei.
“Let’s kill the bastards,” he responded.
Darox gave a thin smile. “We are on stealth protocol, Drask,” he said.
“Sure,” said Drask. “But we can still kill a few of the bastards.”
Darox nodded. “It is likely,” he said. “Let’s go.”
Fifty meters down the canyon, three Reapers fast-roped to the ground from their Skyranger. Darox’s team arrived at the point and waited.
“Darox!” called Petrov when she spotted him. She flipped up her combat goggles, and he could see she was flushed.
“Everything okay, comrade?” asked Darox.
“Hell yeah, it’s okay,” she said. She gazed up at the Skyranger as it disappeared over the ridge. “That was my first ride in an aircraft ever.”
Darox pushed up his helmet-mask too. “It never gets old.”
“You’re just saying that, right?”
“I have been in a jump jet a hundred times,” he said. “Every ride was a rollercoaster.”
Next to Petrov, Joe Epstein unslung his rifle and started checking its scope optics. “Man, I hit hard,” he said. “I didn’t know fast-roping was so, you know . . .”
“Fast?” said Petrov.
“Yeah,” he grinned. “Fast.”
Just down the path, Mia Vo jogged toward them. “Wooo!” she said. “That was just ridiculously exciting.”
“All our Reapers are alert, anyway,” said Rika.
Vo grinned at her. “You Skirmishers will learn to appreciate our alertness,” she said.
“Oh, we already do,” said Rika.
Petrov squinted as swirling snow stung her eyes, and she pulled her goggles back down. A slow-moving winter storm had drifted through the Summit County passes, complicating the logistics. But it also restricted ADVENT surveillance, providing good cover for the Skyranger deployment. Bradford and the C2 team saw this as a net positive trade-off.
“Let’s move,” said Darox.
The Reapers and Skirmishers jogged up the canyon to the XCOM team’s rally point. There, Captain Thibideaux and his squad of four gathered around a small, hovering Gremlin designated as Drone 526.
“Radios on,” called Thibideaux over the rising wind that swirled down the canyon.
All XCOM and Skirmisher combat helmets were fitted with built-in radio headsets. But the Reapers, who rarely used telecom technology, had been fitted with external headsets. After each of the full team’s twelve team members checked in on the field frequency, Thibideaux ran through a quick review of the operational plan.
* * *
With Mox’s help, XCOM intel had identified a grated maintenance panel that led into Omega Station’s grid of ventilation ductworks.
Four Skirmishers, led by Darox, were designated Sierra squad. They would secure exterior access to the panel located on a back wall in a narrow alley where the facility backed up to a cliff face. Then they’d secure the perimeter, which included an open meadow called the North Flats beyond the station.
Next, Captain Thibideaux and his lightly armored XCOM team, designated Xray squad, would move in behind, laser-torch the panel, and follow the duct passages into the Omega data-core chamber. There, a specialist would direct Drone 526 to hack into the ADVENT database and extract the XCOM Live Analytics coordinates.
During all this, a small Reaper rifle team led by Petrov, code-named Romeo, would perch on the canyon wall and oversee the operation, providing long-range fire support.
“You’ll see everything from up there,” Bradford had told Petrov during the tactical session aboard the Avenger the previous day. “I’m giving you full authority to make an abort call, Petrov. I know that’s putting a lot on your shoulders, but Volk says you can handle it.”
“Volk said that?”
“Yes,” said Bradford. “He did.”
After that tac session, Darox had come up behind her in the bridge corridor, grabbed her by the shoulders, and spun her around to face him. Mahnk stood there with him. Both Skirmishers were nearly a foot taller than her, so it felt like a shakedown by mob goons in a back alley.
“Hey, what’s up, guys?” asked Petrov.
Darox said, “We trust you.”
Next to him, Mahnk nodded vigorously. “Yes, we trust your vast experience,” he said.
Petrov smiled uncomfortably. “Okay,” she said. “Thanks.”
Darox clapped her on the shoulder. “After all, you are almost three times my age,” he said.
Petrov looked up warily. “Is this . . . Skirmisher humor?” she asked.
At this, Mahnk cackled like a troll. Then both hybrids turned and lumbered away.
* * *
Scrambling up handholds increasingly slick with snow, Petrov began to fear that the incoming weather might render her “vast experience” irrelevant. Visibility was already poor, and the overwatch position assigned to her shooters was still another thirty meters up the rock face.
“This is not good,” said Vo, clinging to an outcropping.
“I would categorize it as bad, in fact,” called Epstein, who was leading the way up.
“Just keep going,” shouted Petrov. “I’ll call in a report when we hit the ledge.”
Five minutes later, they were in place. The shooting perch was tucked under an overhang that protected it somewhat from the burgeoning blizzard. As they unslung their Vektor rifles and set up to test the optics, Petrov tapped her earpiece to activate the field link.
“Xray One, this is Romeo,” she called. “We’re in position.”
“Roger that,” answered Thibideaux via radio. “Sierra is ready to push at the gate. Can you see them?”
Petrov put her eye to the rifle scope and scanned across the ground teams. “I see blurry people but very hard to make out who’s who.”
Darox’s voice came over the radio. “I am waving at you,” he said.
“Again?” said Petrov. “You do that a lot.” She nudged her weapon sideways until she spotted a hulking figure waving from the corner of a rock wall. “Okay, got you marked.”
“Ready
to break,” replied Darox.
All three Reapers trained their rifles on the narrow alley running behind Omega Station’s central building. From their perch, they had a perfect view down its length to the opposite end. They also had a clean angle on the rooftop, where ADVENT turrets sat at each back corner. There was no safe route into the alley until those roof guns were neutralized.
“You ready, Mia?” asked Petrov.
“EMP round loaded,” replied Vo. “Back-right turret in gunsight.”
Petrov targeted the back-left turret. Then she tapped her earpiece again.
“On your call, big guy,” she said.
* * *
Poised at the rock wall’s edge, Darox and his team affixed suppressors to their shotgun muzzles. The noise reduction wasn’t perfect, but in a windy snowsquall a suppressor could muffle a jarring shotgun blast enough to avoid triggering a station-wide alert.
“Ready?” called Darox to his team. All three Skirmishers gave a thumbs-up.
“Attention, all units,” called Captain Thibideaux over the radio. “You know the drill. Once those guns are glowing blue, the clock is ticking. Everybody move fast, people. In and out, before Omega Station command sends a team to see why those turrets are offline.” There was a brief pause. Then he said, “Okay, son. On your call.”
Darox nodded at his team. He raised his Kal-7.
He said, “Zap those guns, Romeo.”
Just like that, both corner turrets crackled as if struck by blue lightning. Darox dashed around the rocks and into the breezeway. Mahnk and Rika followed him in; Drask stepped into the alley entrance, then turned and posted at the corner.
“Backside is locked down,” called Drask.
Darox sprinted down the alley toward the opposite exit.
“Nothing in the breezeway,” he reported. Halfway down the passage, he glanced up and spotted the grated maintenance panel recessed in the wall. “I have the access vent marked about eight feet off the ground.”
“Perfect,” called Thibideaux. “Xray, get those stepladders ready.”
When Darox reached the alley’s end, he peered carefully around the corner at the wide-open meadow. “The North Flats are clear.”
“Okay, Xray, go, go, go!” called Thibideaux via radio. “Alley secured. Sierra, we’re drafting on you.”
