by J E Loddon
“I don’t want to do this either,” Tasia said to me. “It really is us or them, though. You want to see your friend Chris again?” I nodded, more convincingly. “You owe it to him to make it back in one piece, don’t you?” she continued. Again, I nodded, but I really did mean it that time. Chris had made sacrifices to follow me to the Division. If he was willing to do that to try to keep me safe, I had to be willing to do it for myself. A lone shot rang out. The unmistakable sound of a sniper rifle. With any luck, we now had one less guard to face.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
As soon as we heard the shot, we got moving. Tasia’s words had managed to steel me somewhat, and my legs were a lot more solid under me again. By the time we had the silo firmly in sight, the guards were crouched in defensive positions, trying to see where the shot had come from. Antonia had been smart, though. She’d taken one shot only, then remained still so the enemy couldn’t track her position. We opened fire at the five remaining guards, who were crouched behind what appeared to be storage crates. I saw, with a grim sort of satisfaction, that Antonia had indeed hit her mark. There was a figure lying on the ground by the silo. The guards started firing back at us. We weren’t using too much ammunition. We were really just taking pot shots. From that distance, none of us were really accurate enough to hit the guards behind their cover. Another sniper rifle shot rang out. Another guard went down. Our abrupt arrival had taken the guards focus off of Antonia, and she had benefited as a result. With the fire coming from two different directions, the guards seemed undecided about which threat they should be defending against most.
“We need to push forward,” Tasia called out, realising they were too startled to chase us into the trees. We did as she suggested, fanning out to make it even harder for them to effectively cover from us. More sniper shots rang out, but not at the guards we had pinned down. I tried to see what Antonia was shooting at, and I realised there were two soldiers approaching us from one side. Without time to over-think it, I turned my rifle towards the new arrivals and started firing at them. I wasn’t purposely missing, I just didn’t have time to fully set up my aim. They dropped back behind the shrubbery.
“We need to fall back!” Tasia called out, now realising that we were in danger of being surrounded. The plan was not working well, and I tried to think of alternatives. It wouldn’t be too many more shots before the enemy was able to work out where Antonia was. We had no way of knowing which direction some of the mobile squads might come from. We hadn’t managed to draw anyone away from the silo, and with each passing second, more and more enemy troops were going to be converging on our position.
There was a small explosion coming from the direction of the silo. I looked towards it, and saw only dust and smoke around where the bulk of the guards had been cowering. Then I heard the loud retort of Liberty’s confetti gun. Two guards by the silo stood up, then started to run in our direction. One went down, face first, coinciding with another bang from Liberty’s gun. The other guard made it to the hut, and went inside. I spotted Liberty, approaching the hut. The remaining guards started firing at her, and she was almost caught unaware. I started firing at them, with both Casper and Tasia ahead of me. The guards ducked down again, and I returned by attention to the two that had been trying to flank us. I couldn’t see them, but I fired single shots at the bushes they’d ducked behind in case they were still there. Casper called over at me, and I saw he and Tasia were heading towards the hut, keeping the silo guards pinned down.
I followed them, keeping my attention on the bush I was covering. They arrived at the hut with Liberty, and prepared to try to enter it. Shots rained down one by one at the silo guards from above, Antonia clearly abandoning any attempts to keep her position a secret. The guards started firing up at her, so I tried to pick them off. I couldn’t hit them from my position though, and I grew concerned that eventually they’d get a good shot in on Antonia. I began moving to try to get a better angle, but the soldiers emerged from the bush that I’d forgotten about, and started shooting at me. I dived down behind one of the clumps of trees. They offered barely enough cover, and I was essentially trapped.
I couldn’t see what happened next. Every time I tried to adjust position to see anything, bullets flew to both sides of me, and I remained stuck, backed up against a tree trunk. I waited a few minutes, with nothing to do but listen to the sounds of gunfire. Then, I heard rustling coming from behind me. Assuming the two soldiers had gotten bored with waiting for me to poke my head to far out, I rolled to the side, twisting with my rifle to shoot back at them. Antonia was standing over me.
“Where’d you come from?” I asked her, bewildered.
“I took your friends down,” she replied. “We have to go cover the silo, come one.” I got up and followed her. Liberty, Tasia, and Casper were still crouched around the hut. The two guards left at the silo were keeping them pinned down, but couldn’t move themselves for fear of getting hit by retaliatory fire. We joined Liberty’s group.
“You’re not in the hut yet?” I asked.
“We don’t know what’s in there,” Liberty replied. “We need to take those other guards out so we can concentrate on the hut, but they’re well dug in over there.” They were crouched down behind some very solid-looking equipment crates, a pile of earth on the other side of them. “They built this silo more recently,” she said. “There’s no grass on the earth.”
“We’re running out of time,” Antonia pointed out. “The other squads are probably surrounding us.”
“We don’t really have many options,” Liberty said. “If we try to flank them, we’re gonna be exposed in all directions.”
“Well, someone has to make a decision,” Antonia retorted. Then, we heard gunshots of a kind we hadn’t heard before. We looked around, and saw Cal, handgun in one hand, component in the other. He was standing over the crates the guards had been crouched behind.
“I got bored!” he shouted. “Get the silo open.” We all looked at each other in amazement. I’d forgotten he was even a part of the operation. We gathered together around the entrance to the hut. It was locked. We all trained our guns on it, and blasted away until it fell into the room. After a seconds pause, Liberty and Casper stood on either side of the doorway, then turned into it, firing. They stopped after a couple of shots each, and Liberty went in.
“Cover Cal in the silo,” she shouted out at us. Having been in the other silo, and knowing the layout, I went with Casper over to the silo. Antonia and Tasia covered our approach, then took up defensive positions around the hut. Cal worked on the explosive device inside the silo. Two pairs of enemy soldiers started to approach the hut, not noticing that Casper and I were in the hatchway to the silo. We waited until they were within a good firing angle, then started shooting. Tasia and Antonia shot at them from the direction of the hut, and they were caught in the crossfire. Two of them went down. The other two ran for cover, but only one made it. The four of us kept the solider pinned down whilst Cal finished his work.
“Are we ready to run for it?” he shouted up to us.
“We’ve got one hostile pinned down,” Casper called back to him.
“Take him out,” Cal called back. “We don’t wanna get shot in the back when we sprint away from this explosion.” Casper and I looked at each other. There was no way I was going to approach the enemy soldier to deliver a killing blow. Casper didn’t look particularly keen either. He threw some signals over at Tasia and Antonia. They thew some back, then Liberty appeared from inside the hut, and made her way around the back of it. The rest of us fired at the soldier to keep his attention, and Liberty crept around behind him. He must have heard her approaching, cos he turned to face her. He managed to get two hasty shots off before Liberty dropped him with a scatter gun blast. Luckily, she didn’t seem to be hurt.
Casper gave the OK to Cal, and after a couple of seconds, the old man slowly climbed up the ladder to the top of the silo. He met up with us, and we left the silo, rendezvousing with the others at Liberty�
��s position. She was bleeding. I noticed the blood on her arm, and my heart leaped in my mouth. She was grimacing with pain.
“I’m OK,” she said, “It’s just a scratch.”
“Time to move,” Cal said. We started off in the direction of the forest. “Not that way,” he shouted. We looked at Liberty, confused. She shrugged. Cal was already sprinting off. “Move!” he screamed over at us. We followed, as fast as we could. There was obviously a risk that we would run into an enemy squad, but we had to get as far away from the blast as we could. Again, though, it took a good few minutes, probably longer than the first one. We were well out of the way when the deafening explosion came, shaking the ground beneath us. Cal continued running.
“Where are we going?” Casper asked him.
“We’ve got one more thing we need to do,” he replied.
“Screw that, we need to find a flat area so we can call the transport in!” Casper said.
“Not yet,” Cal insisted, “We’re not done.”
“What is it,” Liberty called after him. “Is there another SAM site?”
“It’s classified,” he growled back. “It’ll just take a minute.” We all looked at Liberty for a decision. She just shook her head, at a loss as to what to do.
“This is madness!” Casper shouted at Cal. “It’s time to go!” Cal just ran on, ignoring him. Casper continued running after him, but was starting to look pretty angry. We ran for at least another five minutes, passing trees, flowers, and some increasingly rocky areas. We came to a sizable rock, some twenty meters high. As we ran around it, we made a shocking discovery.
It looked like a building site. There were supply crates and equipment scattered about. There was machinery that looked like cranes, and some truck-like vehicles. Further away, there was a massive frame, which looked like a large building in the early stages of construction. We looked at each other in astonishment. This was something far larger than a missile silo. This looked to be the beginnings of an immense building. The foundation covered meters and meters of ground, with the frame only covering part of it so far.
“What is this?!” Liberty asked Cal, awe-struck.
“This,” Cal said, “is what’s classified.” He took a device from his belt, and held it pointed at the site around us, turning slowly.
“They’re building,” Liberty said. “What is it?”
“Can’t tell,” Cal replied. “It’s big, whatever it is.”
“We need to destroy it,” Tasia pointed out.
“There’s no way,” Cal said shaking his head. “This is far too big for us, even if we did have enough explosives.” He continued to record the surroundings.
“We need to get out of here,” Casper said urgently. “It’s a miracle we’re all still alive, but let’s not push it.”
“I have to get this,” Cal told him. “We won’t get another chance. We need as much intel as we can get.” Casper threw his hands up in defeat. “Fan out,” Cal told us. “See what you can find, but keep an eye out for hostiles.” Again we looked at Liberty, and again, she shrugged.
“I’m gonna find somewhere for the transport to land,” Casper said, and wandered off.
“Casper!” Tasia called after him, “don’t wander off on your own.”
“Wherever I go, I’ll be safer than we are here,” Casper called back. Tasia sighed, shoulders slumping.
“Fan out,” Cal called out again. We all complied. We’d come this far, we might as well carry on.
I looked around. There were machines, and materials scattered about. It all looked familiar, yet alien at the same time. The enemy had roughly the same proportions as us, so the equipment all looked like stuff I could potentially use myself, if I knew how. There were numerous piles of sheeting. It looked like carbon sheeting, but had a much different texture, and was far darker, almost black. I carefully opened a few containers, but couldn’t make much sense of what anything was. They were all just some form of building materials. Reels of polymers. Fastenings. There was nothing that looked like weapons. I started to feel uneasy. We’d been wandering around for several minutes, and I had no doubt that we’d be set upon by enemy forces sooner rather than later if we stuck around. I started looking for Cal. I made my way over to the main frame, and walked through it. I stepped between some huge lifting rigs. On the other side, I saw a huge expanse of sky. Cal was there, training an ocular on something in the distance.
As I stepped towards him, I noticed the complete absence of ground in front of me. That’s when I noticed the wide expanse of water stretched out below us. We were on a cliff. Realising I was almost right at the edge, I jumped back, heart pounding. I had very nearly stepped off. I turned to Cal, who was still intently looking out. I followed his view, and vaguely made out land across the waters from us, several kilometres away. Cal dropped the ocular to his side, and that’s when I saw the slack-jawed expression of his face.
“Cal?” I asked, “are you OK?” He didn’t reply. He instead thrust the ocular into my hands. Frowning, I took it, and held it up to my eye, whilst he started recording the view. It took me several seconds to get my bearings, and train the ocular onto the land across from us. There looked like a huge, black cliff. As I zoomed the ocular in, though, I realised it wasn’t really a cliff. It was too flat and smooth. Zooming further in, I saw it was actually a wall. I moved my gaze around it, and saw several smaller walls. It was a building, with numerous buildings next to it. There were also vehicles and, I realised, beings moving about.
“What is it?!” I asked him.
“It’s an enemy facility,” he replied breathlessly. “And it’s huge. It looks like it’s nearly finished. This must have taken them months to build. They’ve been here for a long time.”
“The probes would have picked them up, though,” I said. He gave a humourless chuckle.
“The probes are useless,” he said. “They fly around from planet to planet, looking at a few kilometres at a time. The enemy is smart. Smarter than us,” he continued bitterly. “If we built something like this, we’d have ships up in orbit, letting the whole galaxy know we were there. They’ve dropped equipment and materials off, then vanished.” He stopped recording, turning towards me.
“The probes are looking for enemy activity,” he told me. “They rely on the presence of ships. Sure, they scan the planets as they fly by, but they can’t pick everything up. They scan for energy, and particular shapes and density of structures, but they’re limited to line of sight. They have too much distance to cover.” He shook his head ruefully. “You’re a scout. We pick something up, you go out and take a look. But we can only cover this vast galaxy a piece at a time. By the time we’ve looked at one planet, someone can be set up on the previous one. The galaxy is too big. The enemy knows where we are, but we can’t say the same.” He started to walk off back towards the building site. “Come on,” he said. “We need to get out of here before they arrive.”
“Before who arrives?” I called after him.
“The boats,” he shouted back. I shakily brought the ocular back up to my eye, and looked back out at the water. There, halfway between the other side and the cliff I stood on, were several boots moving across the water. Even at that distance, kilometres away, they looked big. I dropped the ocular. Then, I ran.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
I passed Cal on the way back through the structure. I spotted the others standing around at the other end of it, looking over at us. I started waving my arms at them.
“Time to go!” I shouted. “Go, go, go.” They continued to stand there, watching me running towards them. I continued to run, and arrived at them, panting.
“We have… to move… now... go… go go...”, I said, trying to catch my breath. I looked back across at Cal, who was still just strolling through the structure.
“What is it?” Liberty asked me.
“Boats,” I said, “boats are coming. We have to go.”
“Boats?” Tasia asked me, confused. “Boats from whe
re?”
“There’s a big facility,” I said. “Across the water. It’s huge. We have to go. We really need to go.”
“Cal doesn’t look too concerned,” Liberty pointed out, giving me a worried look. “We’re waiting for Casper to come back.”
“Which way did he go?” I asked frantically. They all pointed North-East. “Well, then I suggest we go find him,” I said, and started running off in that direction. When I realised no-one else was following me, I stopped, and held my hands out. “What are you doing?” I demanded.
“Milo said there are boats coming?” Liberty asked Cal as he arrived.
“Yeah, there are a few boats,” he replied. “They’re pretty big. We should probably get going now.” Liberty just stared back at him for a moment.
“So we should be running?” she questioned him.
“Probably should be, yeah,” he replied. Then he started off into a jog towards me. The rest looked at each other in frightened bemusement, and followed after us.
