"Ah, yes, General Shepherd has use for Dustin there. Besides," Stonewall watched his tanks burn and repeated in an acidic tone what Intelligence told him before the attack, "we won't be needing him here."
The first two days of fighting The Cooperative had been bad days. The advantages of California's Stealth Field generator out of Beale were easy to see on Interstate 5 that afternoon. They never knew the chopper approached until its missiles hit the armor.
"I'm sorry, Benny, you came here to tell me something not listen to my rambling."
"Oh, um, yes, General. We've been ordered to send a detachment over toward Callahan."
"Pardon me, but did you say Callahan?"
Stonewall knew the tiny gold-rush era town of Callahan rested approximately fifteen miles to the west on the rim of the Shasta National Forest and sat squarely in the middle of Route 3, a north to south thoroughfare paralleling Interstate 5.
"Benjamin, you must be mistaken. Several thousand enemy infantry with gun ship support await us outside of Weed, a far more important target than a poorly armed garrison numbering less than two hundred."
"No sir, that's the order. You need to confirm receipt with the courier who brought it."
Ten minutes later, Stonewall stormed into his command tent at a rest stop along the Interstate. There, sitting in one of two chairs around a big map unfurled on a wooden table, waited a man with a bushy mustache and a shaved head wearing green camouflage but no rank on his collar. Stonewall's urgent steps stopped as he recognized his visitor.
"Ah yes, Mister Gordon Knox. I should have guessed that an order to send my troops on a foolish errand could only come from Imperial Intelligence."
Gordon stood and smiled. Stonewall, in contrast, found it difficult to smile after having watched so many of his tanks burn due to The Cooperative's Stealth Shield, a technology Intelligence thought would be 'unreliable.'
Knox stood next to one of the hanging oil lamps lighting the tent and told McAllister, "I need you to occupy Callahan. That isn't too much to ask, is it?"
"No, of course not. Just do me a favor and ask The Cooperative not to send any of their attack helicopters in our direction. You see, we're having a devil of a time spotting their approach. Why, before we even know what hits us, we lose two, three, sometimes more of our tanks and a fair number of troops. And veteran troops such as mine are so difficult to replace."
"Oh, now never fear, General. We just need to tough this out a little while longer. Trust me, taking Callahan will be easy. The garrison will not only surrender to you, they will replace some of those valuable veteran troops you have lost."
That captured General McAllister's attention.
Knox continued, "You see, while The Cooperative's Stealth Field works rather well, it seems the rest of their little paradise isn't quite as wonderful for the rank and file."
Stonewall could not help it. He matched Knox's smile.
---
The Eagle airships sat in the dark wedged between tall Ponderosa Pines. It had taken skill for the four ships to find landing zones in the dense hillside forest, but it had taken even more skill to fly low enough among the mountain crevices and gorges to avoid detection.
Inside Eagle One, Trevor Stone opened a locker and pulled out a gray suit covered in a kind of wiry mesh. Other soldiers already wore the suits, including rubbery helmets and metallic faceplates with goggles.
Rick Hauser walked from the cockpit to the passenger compartment.
Trevor, slipping one leg then the other into the body suit, asked, "Time?"
Hauser answered, "Thirty minutes. What if she's late?"
Trevor slipped his left arm in one of the sleeves and said, "Then we're all dead."
At first glance, the strange battle suits might be mistaken for padded scuba gear. In truth, the suits provided extra support, actually enhancing the wearer's endurance. Just as he reverse-engineered alien technology from the invading armies, Omar Nehru had reversed-engineered the suit Trevor brought home from the humans of an alternate universe.
He fit the mask on and peered through the goggles. Hauser double-checked the mesh that covered the suit and Trevor's assault rifle, and ensured all the power cords were connected. The mesh had not come from that alternate Earth but, rather, came from the Chaktaw; another piece of alien technology adapted for humanity's use.
Hauser asked, "Sir, are you sure you should be in the front lines on this one?"
He placed a hand on Rick's shoulder. That served as answer enough.
"Let's go."
The lights in the cabin turned off. The side door slid open.
Hauser watched the strike teams head off into the forest behind a line of K9s.
---
Sparkling stars covered the midnight sky above the buildings once home to the Seventh Space Warning Squadron. The fence-enclosed facility sat atop one of the many small, grassy hills west of the Sierra Nevada range and housed the PAVE PAWS antenna that resembled a three-sided 1970s era stereo speaker standing several stories tall.
The Witiko enhancements--a tower, anti-air emplacements, a fuel depot, a box-like building known as 'the pen'--gave the compound a cluttered, messy look.
That clutter provided cover for Nina Forest and Vince Caesar, the Dark Wolves charged with infiltrating the main building. At the same time, Carl Bly and Oliver Maddock lay in ghillie suits atop hills within sniping distance of the complex.
Two days since the failed air strike, the Dark Wolves did what the F-111s failed to do; breach the facility's defenses. Unlike the planes, Nina's team received considerable help in the form of one disgruntled janitor (a former Cal-Berkley Professor) who hid the two commandos on a maintenance truck.
Armed with a detailed layout of the complex, Nina and Vince made their way to the roof of the four-story building at the center of the base. There they knelt in the darkness, their black tactical suits blending with the night.
Nina dribbled sizzling yellow goo from a small packet onto the iron bolts holding a metal grate above a ventilation shaft. Vince helped her pull the shield away after the bolts dissolved.
With that obstruction cast aside, Vince Caesar assembled a tripod hoist from which dangled a stretch of nylon rope. Nina slipped the hook at the end of that rope around a latch on her body suit and then adjusted the small, but heavy, pack slung on her shoulders.
As for armaments, she left behind her assault rifle and sword, planning to rely on stealth and speed as opposed to firepower.
Nina swung her legs into the shaft…
…A guard in black coveralls continued to walk his rounds between tan-painted walls. His boot steps echoed along the marble floor, announcing both his coming and going.
Nina—hiding behind dusty old crates stacked in a dead-end corridor—allowed the guard to continue unmolested. Moments later, she moved from cover into the open, traversing the brightly-lit corridors.
She had memorized the map provided by the janitor and walked fast for her objective. Of course, she knew she would be discovered eventually, she only hoped to complete her job on time. And while completing her job was always her primary goal, tonight's mission meant even more; she knew Trevor Stone led the assault on the base.
Why he chose to fight in the front lines she did not know. Indeed, the more she thought about Trevor Stone the more he confused her. Ironically, as that confusion grew she found herself more and more intrigued by the man.
Three years ago Stone traveled into hostile territory to rescue Nina and her team, for reasons she did not understand. But now—tonight—she did understand that Trevor trusted her to take out the base's defenses, to the point that he essentially placed his life in her hands.
Yes, she would complete the mission. No one--human or alien--would stand in her way.
Nevertheless, she scurried through the enemy's hallways with a silenced pistol ranking as her most lethal weapon. If things came to a firefight, she stood at a serious disadvantage. Then again, if a firefight erupted before she bre
ached the main computer room her mission would fail.
Captain Nina Forest came to a stretch of corridor where an ancient wall-mounted security camera swung on a motorized swivel. She pressed against the wall and hurried under the device, timing her movement so as to be below the camera's arc of vision as it panned…
…Trevor led the two dozen soldiers of the strike team from the mountain slope onto the rolling, grassy hills surrounding the generator complex. With the cover of the mountainside behind, the time had come to take advantage of Omar Nehru's hard work in studying and adapting Chaktaw battle ponchos.
"Suits on," he radioed.
One by one the soldiers touched small units mounted on their belts. The chameleon mesh on the suits powered up and adjusted to match the ambient colors around the wearers. In this case, the gray suits changed to a pattern of brown and faded gold in reflection of the dipping and rising field they crossed. The soldiers did not turn invisible-- not truly--but only the keenest eyes could depict their moving silhouettes against the background…
…To Nina's left, a thin hall stretched twenty yards to a 'T'. At that 'T' waited a wall of tall glass windows and a corresponding glass door. Behind those windows and that door stood a forest of Cray Supercomputers controlling the network of security sensors around the exterior of the base.
While the place hosted only a small garrison of Cooperative soldiers, a protective shield of automated turrets could rip apart any ground force.
Nina spied two humans with side arms standing in front of those glass windows, one a short bald black man, the other taller with curly dark hair. The two shared words over something written on the bald black man's clipboard.
She also noticed a shadow stretching from around the corner, indicating a third person--human or otherwise--waiting in the wings. She also knew that at least two technicians worked inside the computer room.
Nina momentarily closed her eyes and inhaled a deep breath. She exhaled that breath in a softly-whispered battle cry no louder than her heart beat…the cry of a dark wolf: "awwwooooo."
She turned the corner and ran full speed, her ponytail wavered behind like a rippling streamer. The two men in front of the glass windows pulled their eyes from the clipboard to see a woman in black BDUs charging.
Nina leapt and drove a flying sidekick into the bald black man's chest, sending the clipboard off in one direction and the man hard into the glass behind. His head whiplashed against the window, causing a crack and sending him into a state of unconsciousness before his body hit the floor.
Nina landed where that man had stood a split second before and turned on the taller, curly-haired guy. Even as she moved to deal with him her eyes identified the shadow: a silver-faced Witiko officer armed with one of the aliens' standard-issue rifles, a weapon resembling a cross between a long rifle and a Gatling gun.
While her eyes identified the Witiko, Nina kicked the curly-haired man's knee before he could draw his pistol. As he crumpled she drove a hammer fist to the soft spot at the back of his skull. He fell unconscious.
The motion of her hammer-fist carried through to her utility belt after hitting the man's head. In the blink of an eye, she grabbed a sharp throwing star from that belt and reversed the motion of her arm in a graceful arc. The shiny, deadly star lodged in the Witiko's throat at the same moment he brought his rifle to bear.
Captain Forest wasted no time. She pulled her silenced pistol from a thigh rig and fired a circle of shots into the glass. Next, she un-slung the small but heavy satchel around her shoulder and flung it against the center of the circle she had cut in the glass with her bullets. That weakened slab fell inwards and the satchel tumbled into the computer room. The two shocked technicians scrambled for cover; Nina dropped to the floor and covered her head.
The charge exploded not with shrapnel but a blast of sound, flash, and concussion. Several banks of the Cray computers toppled like dominoes. What remained of the glass wall shattered. One of the technicians--a woman in brown coveralls--flew against the far wall and suffered a fatal head injury. The second tech--an older man--rolled across the floor and came to rest a few paces from the primary upload console, known to Nina Forest as the mission objective.
She walked into the computer room with her eyes fixed on the CD drive at the upload console. Her shoes cracked and snapped over broken glass.
The older technician lay flat on his face, moaning and wiggling. Nina casually popped one round into the back of his skull with a dull thwump.
She knelt in front of the upload console, pulled a disk from her belt, and slipped it into the drive. A moment later a monitor confirmed UPLOADING FILE BRUTUS.EXE…
…Midnight duty in the Operations Tower meant two less technicians and a junior officer running the show instead of a senior one. What did not change, however, was that that officer would be a Witiko Skytroop officer.
Human specialists manned the bank of monitors at the front of the tower, using the electronic devices to search for potential threats that could then be dealt with via automated turrets and computer-controlled anti-air missiles.
"Sir," one of the specialists called for the officer on duty. "Something is wrong."
The Witiko hurried to the man's position and glanced over his shoulder. Sure enough, the perimeter infrared system flickered then went dead. The same occurred at the radar station, visual monitoring station, and motion detector console.
"Check with the computer room."
"Sir," another technician shouted. "There's no answer from the computer room."
The Witiko officer ordered, "Send a security team down there," as he grabbed a red phone from a bank of telephones along the wall. That line called directly to the main gate…
…With the virus fully uploaded, Nina pulled the CD from the console and snapped it in two. Her mission complete, she walked toward the smashed glass at the front of the computer room. She heard the sound of running boots; shadows flickered from a side passage.
She held her pistol in one hand, took a breath, then ran forward. She jumped through the smashed plate glass and hit the marble floor, sliding across like a baseball player diving head first into home plate.
Eight California Cooperative security personnel approached with assault rifles raised. As she slid, Nina fired from her silenced pistol, hitting one of the men in the forehead, another in the leg. Both dropped, one would never get up.
Her bold maneuver surprised the enemy. Nina took advantage of that surprise, rolling around a corner then standing. When on her feet, she raced away retracing her steps from earlier. As she fled, she used her free hand to reach to her pack and grasp the collapsed frame of her 'little buddy.'
Without looking, she tossed it into the air at the same time releasing a spring. The unit tumbled end over end. As it did, three short legs flipped open. The metallic device landed upright on the marble floor, standing two feet tall on three legs. At its top, a round orb and a short barrel.
The security personnel pursued around the corner.
The 'little buddy' wobbled side to side emitting an electronic whop whop whop and fired small energy bolts to cover Nina's escape. Those bolts hit kneecaps and bellies knocking more men to the ground with third degree burns and forcing others to retreat…
…At the main gate a human sentry answered the buzzing phone in the guard shack while two more heavily armed men strolled along where the road entered the complex.
The sentry sighed as he raised the receiver to his ear. The voice on the other end--a Witiko voice--spoke in a monotone dialect, "We are experiencing sensor failure. Have you seen anything unusual at your post?"
The sentry turned his attention away from the gate and threw his eyes toward the control tower fifty yards away and fifty feet in the air. He focused on the tinted windows there as if trying to make eye contact with the officer to whom he spoke.
"No. Everything is clear down here."
Behind him, the night itself appeared to move but neither of the patrolling guards took
notice until a line of strangely dressed commandos materialized at the gate. The pair of armed sentries could do nothing other than raise their hands in surrender.
The man at the guard shack hung up the telephone with an air of disgust, only to turn and face a gun barrel pointed directly at his eyes.
One of the strangely dressed commandos raised a Javelin rocket launcher and fired. The missile slammed into the Operations Tower. Glass and bodies fell, a cloud of smoke billowed out.
After a moment, three objects came from the tower flying out through the debris cloud: Witiko Skytroops.
Two did not make it far. Sniper rounds from Oliver Maddock and Carl Bly hit the moving targets. They dropped like dead birds.
The third Witiko officer pushed his booster pack to full throttle and arched toward the south of the base, avoiding carbine rounds from the strike team. He landed on the wall of the building Imperial Intelligence had identified as 'the pen' and fired the slaver device mounted on his arm into that open-roofed building.
Something big roared…
…Trevor removed his mask and hood as he strolled through the main gate of the complex. His team spread through the facility to secure the relatively small garrison; a task made simple now that the sensors and automated defenses did not function.
The whole place radiated a smell of metal and electricity burning. All controlled, of course, but the Witiko knew much about electronics and rocketry. Trevor felt certain that--like the chameleon suits--captured Cooperative equipment could be assimilated.
Yet despite all the high tech gadgets and captured technology, he knew the victory they won that night came not from wizardry but the skill and reflexes of Nina Forest.
As much as it might cause him pain, he hoped to catch sight of Nina. To tell her…to give her his congratulations on a job well done.
To his left--the south--one of the Eagles came in low over the fence now that the defenses of the base had fallen. It moved slow in support of the commando team with the energy turrets beneath the nose cone swinging from side to side in search of targets. The other ships would arrive soon as well, to provide tactical air support and surveillance.
Beyond Armageddon IV: Schism Page 9
