by J E Loddon
“Hey, I’m short and slim,” Tasia pointed out.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Casper chimed in. “Tasia is our strategist, she should come with me and Liberty,” he opined.
“No,” Cal growled. “You and Mr Curious over here need to go together. One of you needs to be able to set that machine to blow up, and you need a spare in case one of you gets yourself shot.”
“What if you get yourself shot?” Casper countered. “Where’s your spare?”
“I’ve been shot before, and still cleared missions. I can talk one of these girls through it if necessary, you all watched. You two boys need to go together, and your squad leader over here needs to go with you to make sure you don’t do something stupid.”
Casper continued to protest, but Liberty and Cal were on the same page regarding the two teams, and he had no recourse. We all stuck together as we made it to the edge of the forest, then said our goodbyes before heading off towards our own targets.
“Remember,” Cal said. “In position at o’ four hundred. Then, do whatever you need to do to get into that silo. Quietly if you can, blast your way in if you have to. Don’t let them take that component, or you’ll have nothing to blow it up with,” he continued. “You still remember how to set it up?” he asked us. We both nodded. “Good. Don’t screw it up,” he said. Then he took his team off.
“He should be a motivational speaker,” Casper whispered sarcastically.
“When I retire,” Cal hissed over at us. Casper looked across at me sheepishly.
“He’s got pretty good ears for an older guy,” he whispered to me as low as he could.
Liberty started marching off in the general direction of our target, and we followed behind her. It was still really dark, but without the shadow of the trees, I could make out some vague shapes. Liberty tried to move quickly, but it was tough going. With lots of bushes, and clumps of trees around, and very little light, we kept finding our way blocked by vegetation.. We’d left plenty of time to get to our target, but I started to grow uneasy regardless. If we ran into hostiles, it might delay us too much. A few times, we heard movement. It might have been wild animals, of which we’d seen none, or enemy patrols out looking for us.
“All right, stop,” Liberty ordered. “Casper, get your had scanner out, see if you can pick anything up.” We’d left the large scanning rig behind at the trees. It would only slow us down, and Casper was already weighed down enough by the machine part he was carrying. He put it down, then took his scanner from his belt. He stood silent for a couple of minutes, frowning, and furrowing his brow. Eventually, Liberty lost patience.
“Well,” she said. “Anything?” He pursed his lips.
“I’m not sure,” he said.
“What does that mean?” she asked him. He paused for a moment.
“I’m only really getting one clear energy reading,” he explained. “But it’s way over there,” he said, pointing towards the direction Cal and the others had been travelling in. “If there’s a missile silo near here, it doesn’t put out much energy when it’s not in use.”
“Makes sense,” Liberty said with a sigh. “It’s not going to go hot unless it picks something up. The scanners probably don’t use much energy.”
“More likely,” Casper said, “The scanners are separate, and the site only waits for a radio signal.”
“Great,” said Liberty. “So we’ve got to just stumble around in the dark and hope we find this thing? And that’s if it isn’t built completely underground?” Casper shrugged apologetically.
“I’m not sure Cal is really the master strategist he likes to think he is,” Casper said. “We don’t even know if he sent us on the right course.”
“OK,” Liberty said, “Then what do we do? Just keep walking the way we were told?”
“I dunno,” said Casper,holding his hands up. “Our actual strategist is on the other team.”
“Is there any way to get the SAM site to open up,” I asked him. “If we… I don’t know, throw rocks up in the air?” Casper just raised an eyebrow, staring at me. “Well, not a rock. I mean… I don’t know. If we could get it to activate a bit, maybe you could get a reading?”
“Activate a bit?” he replied. “Just a bit? How do you get something to activate ‘a bit’?”
“Casper, that’s not helpful,” Liberty snapped. Casper gave her a wounded look. “It’s not necessarily a stupid idea,” she pointed out. “I’m not sure exactly how we would do it though. What kind of things does it scan for?”
“Powered objects flying through the air,” he said with a shrug. “I’m no expert, but it’s looking for energy signatures above ground level.”
“What stops it from blowing up ships from its own side?” she asked him.
“They send a signal to it, telling it not to fire,” he suggested. “I mean, I guess that’s how it works. It makes sense.”
“Like a comm signal?” she asked. He nodded. “To the SAM site, or to the sensors?”
“To the sensors, I would imagine,” Casper replied. “It’ll be the sensors that tell the launcher to fire. The launcher would then fire up its own scanners, and lock on and fire at the target.”
“Are we definitely thinking there are separate sensors?” she asked him. He thought for a few moments.
“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, there would have to be. If the SAM site was scanning the whole area by itself, it would need to be a pretty powerful scanner, and I’d probably be able to pick that up. With several lower power scanners scattered about, they use less power each, so are less detectable, and one failing scanner doesn’t stop the whole system from being effective.” Liberty sighed.
“So even if we do find something with a radio signal, it could only be one of the scanners?” she asked him. He nodded. “Is there a way to send out a radio signal, and see where it’s picked up?” she asked him.
“That would probably be suicide,” he pointed out. “We’d be giving away our position if anyone picked the signal up. They’d be able to triangulate it, especially if they do have a lot of sensors constantly on, waiting for a signal.” We all fell silent. Then Casper frowned, and started looking at his scanning unit again. Then he took his comm unit, and fiddled with that.
“What are you doing?” Liberty asked after a couple of minutes. Casper ignored her for a couple of seconds, and then a smile spread across his face. “What?” Liberty asked impatiently.
“Oh, you’re gonna have to promote me,” he replied, looking up at her.
“I might have to thump you,” she said. “What is it?”
Casper explained that because the scanners had to leave their channels open, waiting for a signal, he had a way of locating them. By opening his channel, and slowly cycling through frequencies, he could see a spike on the hand scanner when there was interference.
“The enemy technology isn’t the same as ours,” he explained. “But it isn’t that different either. Radio waves are radio waves. We’ve come up with alternatives, sure, and so have they. Anything more complicated, though, tends to be unreliable. Their frequencies might not quite run the same as ours, but I only need one connection nearby. In theory, I could find the actual SAM site this way, cos it has to keep an open channel too. I wouldn’t know it was the SAM site, though.” Liberty looked at him in confusion for a few moments.
“That’s great, Casper. But how does it help us?” she finally asked him. “Finding one of the sensors doesn’t help us with finding the silo.” Casper smiled again.
“All the sensors have one commonality. They have to relay information to the nearest missile silo,” he replied. “That means they’ll have one receiver pointing straight up at the sky, probably rotating, and one fixed transmitter. Pointing towards the silo. We just follow the direction the transmitter is pointing in.” Liberty looked doubtful.
“It’s that simple?” she asked uncertainly.
“It’s that simple,” Casper asserted with a smug grin. Liberty looked at me. I s
hrugged. I wasn’t really sure I fully understood it, but it certainly sounded plausible.
“OK,” said Liberty, “try and find the nearest sensor.”
“Already have,” Casper said, still smirking. “Let’s go.”
Casper led the way, and we trotted along behind him. We followed for a couple of minutes, then Liberty started to get a bit panicky.
“Casper, we’re moving away from the direction Cal said the site was in,” she hissed at him. “Are you sure about this?”
“We can wander around in circles hoping to bump into this thing,” Casper replied, “or we can take control of our own destiny. You’re the boss.” Liberty said nothing, and we continued on.
We found the sensor a few minutes later. In fact, we nearly bumped into it. We were fighting our way through some bushes, and as we emerged from them, it stood right in front of us. A tall, conical shape, it looked to be about ten meters high. As Casper had predicted, it had a scanning rig at the top, which was slowly rotating around. We couldn’t find a transmitter at first, but then Casper pointed it out. It was incredibly small, and it wasn’t immediately obvious that it even was something, especially in the darkness that still surrounded us. Then, Casper spotted a small red light on it, blinking intermittently.
“That’s it,” he announced.
“You sure?” Liberty asked, squinting at it.
“Definitely,” he replied. “It’s the only thing on there that’s pointing anywhere but up.”
“This is alien technology,” she reminded him. “The transmitter could be pointing up,” Liberty pointed out, “towards a satellite or something.”
“Science is science. That would make no sense at all,” Casper replied, “It’s part of a system to defend against attack from the air. If you were going to attack the planet, destroying any satellites in orbit would be the first thing you’d do.” I looked at the time. We were running out of time to get into position.
“Time,” I said to Liberty urgently. She looked over her shoulder at me, and hesitated. Then, she turned back to Casper.
“OK, lead the way,” she said. “At a run,” she added.
So off we ran, in the direction that Casper insisted the transmitter was pointing. Neither myself nor Liberty had any way of knowing if Casper was right, but at that point, we didn’t have any choice. We had to just trust in the plan of action. Our trust, it turned out, was well placed. After ten minutes of a decent paced run, with all caution abandoned, we reached an area that had some low-level lighting. We approached cautiously. There was a wide, rounded cone sticking out of the ground, about ten meters wide, and nearly as high. Just to the side of that, was a small hut covered with receivers and transmitters.
“This has to be it,” Casper said. We both agreed. Checking the chrono, we had about ten minutes to wait. That would give us a chance to rest after the run, and scope out the area a bit, see what we were facing. We ducked down behind a mound of earth, which presumably had been dug out of the ground to accommodate the silo.
“This mound has grass growing on it,” Liberty pointed out. We just looked back at her with puzzled expressions. “It looks like they’ve dug this earth out of the ground for the silo,” she said. “Grass takes time to grow. This silo has been here for a while, several weeks at least.” We watched the site for a few minutes. There was no sign of any hostiles, but the hut looked a likely place to find security. “Why isn’t it better protected?” Liberty asked, to no-one in particular.
“Maybe they think Cal died in the explosion,” Casper suggested. “If they don’t think there’s anyone on the planet to protect it from, they’re not going to have it heavily guarded.” Liberty didn’t look convinced. She checked the chrono. Four minutes to go.
“OK, here’s the plan,” she said. “I’ll go around and approach the hut from the other side. You two wait here. When the chrono hits time, you go. Approach the silo, but keep the hut in site, and covered with your rifles. I’ll enter the hut, take out any security I find in there. I’ll take Milo’s grenade. Once I’m in the hut, if you don’t see any hostiles, the two of you need to get into the silo, and get going with the component.”
“What if we can’t get into the silo,” Casper asked.
“There’ll be a service hatch, at the very least. If you can’t open it, I must be able to open it from inside the hut. Work quickly. Casper, you set the explosive, Milo, cover him. OK?” I wanted to protest, out of nothing more than force of habit. It sounded dangerous, and pretty half-baked, but we didn’t have time to discuss it, with just under three minutes left. Before either of us could say anything, Liberty had taken my grenade and scarpered off anyway. We sat in waiting, watching the timer tick down, looking out for Liberty’s arrival at the hut. With still no sign of enemy activity, the counter ticked down from 3-2-1…
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
As soon as the chrono hit o’ four hundred, we started moving. There was still no sign of Liberty at the hut, but in the knowledge that Cal would probably be raising merry hell at the other site within moments, we needed to move quickly. We kept low, and ran towards the silo. We cautiously skirted our way around its base, Casper looking ahead, my eyes glued to the hut. I couldn’t see the entrance to the hut from the silo. I was facing the south wall of it from the south-west, and the door was on its east wall. Casper suddenly stopped, and I walked into the back of him. The impact startled me, and I pulled my rifle up.
“Stop,” Casper said, glaring at me. “I’ve found the hatch. There’s no control panel for it.” We both searched around the hatch, but found no sign of any way to open it. “We need this open now,” Casper said urgently. “Any sign of Liberty?”
“No,” I replied. “Should I go over to the hut?” Casper thought for a moment, looking over at the hut nervously. “If you do that,” he said, “there’s no-one covering me.” We both just stood there for a few moments, panicked, but indecisive. Then, a small rumble emanated from the silo, and we both took a step back, concerned it was about to start firing. Then, the hatch slid open.
“Wow,” said Casper, looking towards the hut, “great work Liberty. Let’s go.”
“It might have not been Liberty,” I said to his back as I followed him in.
We stepped into the silo, and were amazed at what we saw. There was a small platform that curved around the outskirts of the silo, and in the middle, a large open maw. We looked over the edge, and saw a large array of missiles arranged in a circle, surrounding a launcher. The launcher itself held six missiles. The missiles were several meters down, and there were a lot of them.
“The old man’s lucky there’s anything left of him,” Casper said. He put down the component, then looked over the edge again. “You’re gonna need to help me get down those ladders with this thing,” he said, pointing at a wrung of bars leading down to where the missiles were stored. I looked nervously at the missiles.
“Do we really have to go near those things?” I asked. “Can’t we set it, then just drop it down?” He looked at me, then at the drop.
“I’m not sure,” he said. “It’s not too far down, but what if the fall sets it off? We’ll be blown to bits.” We decided that taking it down to the bottom was the best option. Together, we struggled to get it down the small ladder rungs. There were a couple of moments were we almost dropped it. We’d been sensible enough to not set it before the descent, however, and after a couple of minutes, it was at the bottom. Casper set to work on it, while I hastily climbed back up to the top. There’d been no-one covering the entrance to the silo whilst we’d been struggling with the component, and no-one to watch Liberty’s back. I got to the top, then peeked back out at the hut. There was no movement. It occurred me that someone could have gone into the hut and taken Liberty out whilst we’d been down in the silo. I hadn’t heard gunfire, but the walls of the silo were pretty thick, and we’d been several meters underground. I considered running over to the hut to check it out, but then I’d be leaving Casper exposed. Stick to the plan.
Stick to the plan.
I ran back in, and looked down at Casper. I couldn’t see how he was doing from where I was. I thought about calling down for a progress report, but I didn’t want to distract him. I went back to the hatch, and watched the hut. No movement. Was Liberty still in there? Had it even been her that had opened the hatch? I was getting increasingly tense with each passing second. Not having seen the enemy at all so far made it somehow worse. I was beginning to think they were hiding in the hut, laughing at us. I stepped out of the silo, and inched my way around in one direction, having a look around for movement, then went the other way and did the same. Everything was remarkable still.
I was standing just inside the hatch, staring at the hut, considering going down to check on Casper when I saw it. Movement to the East. I hid myself within the hatch, and watched. Two… no, three enemy soldiers, walking towards the entrance to the hut. I froze for a second, panic surging in my chest. I didn’t know if Liberty was definitely in the hut or not, but if she was, she’d have no escape route. I waited until the last second, hoping they’d change direction, or stop before they got to the hut. They didn’t, though. I got down on one knee, assuming my favoured firing position. I aimed not at the soldiers, but just passed the southeast corner of the hut, between them and it. I’d fire there. I wouldn’t be firing at them, but if they tried to run into the hut, they’d step into my line of fire. I didn’t want to kill anyone, but Liberty was counting on me.
