Project Terra

by S. J Woods

  He threw himself into training; scaling rockfaces, navigating by the sun, scouting for water, non-tech combat. Dane was exhausted from the physical exertion and he slept soundly, most nights, despite the echo of Teonie’s words circling his mind. He figured that there was nothing he could do until Teonie got back. He couldn’t help but watch Gia, after Teonie’s comment about her not taking her pills, but he’d seen her consume the capsules with his own eyes every morning since their conversation. He remembered Seraphine’s simple explanation for the tech-out and the thirteen who hadn’t made it, and it crossed his mind to doubt Teonie and Gia’s versions of events.

  He barely knew Teonie, he reminded himself. Just because he’d grown close to her during their five-day journey didn’t mean he really knew her. Gia was certainly giving off indications that she was a little highly-strung, and Neha had been adamant that she had been the one to push Seraphine. Besides, if Gia wasn’t taking her tablets, she’d have been keeling over with fatigue and malnutrition by now. Dane shook away the thoughts. His mind kept coming back to the one thing he couldn’t explain away. How did they know about Arielle? Just the thought of her name stirred up the emotions, and his heart ached a little. Not just for the memory of his beloved little sister, but for his siblings and the tiny progress he had made with his mother on his visit home. In the dark quiet of the men’s dormitory, listening to the heavy breathing around him, it suddenly felt very important that he was back with his family.

  The rising tensions between Apatia seemed to be at the forefront of everybody’s mind. Officer Williams shared the latest news with the squad in the absence of their own devices. The breakthrough in treating the nation’s infertility, which had been all that was on anyone’s lips the day they had been returned to base, was secondary now to the announcement that Latheia had launched an aggressive takeover of several independent states that bordered Mela, the only comparable power to Apatia’s on the planet.

  The Officer read slowly from the breaking news article and Dane craned forward to hear her words.

  “Mela have announced their regret that they have previously been allied to Latheia, and while they extend their apologies to the state of Apatia for continuing this relationship, the President of Mela reiterates that they were in no way party to the biological attack that caused Apatia to close her borders thirty years ago.” She said. “With Latheia’s illegal invasion of innocent countries, Mela is requesting the support of Apatia in tackling Latheia for the good of mankind.”

  “Has the General responded publicly?” Neha asked as she finished reading and a murmur went around the group.

  Officer Williams shook her head. “I’ve been given instructions to step up training. We need to be back at the Command Centre in a week and we’ll be sent to defend strategic posts from there.”

  “Already?” Kaya looked nervous.

  Despite the bespoke, intense training, it all felt rushed. Nobody seemed to have got used to handling the knives that hung uncomfortably at their hips unused. Dane felt like he had adjusted well to living outdoors without technology, more so than some of the group. His muscles were more defined, and he had learned so much in the short time they had been here, but even he felt a jolt of panic at putting all this into practise.

  “Officer,” Neha looked around the group before speaking. “With all due respect, we’re in the dark here. We know where we’re going to be, we know what we’re expected to do up against Artificials and Organic enemies. Our borders have been closed for thirty years. Not one person, not even Presidents or Heads of States, have been granted entry to Apatia. No attempt to penetrate our borders has been successful. So, why now? Why does the country believe that Latheia now have the resources to travel across the sea or the sky, unnoticed, and why would they bypass all our cities and head out here, or into the National Park, or the marshes? I think I speak for everyone when I say, we just want to know who we’ll be facing and why.”

  A murmur of agreement went about around the camp, and Dane turned to give Neha a grateful look. She had voiced all their concerns. The way they were being prepared for war was unprecedented.

  Officer Williams cast a steely gaze around the squad, but despite her stern look, Dane could see a flicker of uncertainty in her usually hard eyes.

  “You’ll know more,” She said finally. “When we have that information. As soldiers, you need to trust in your Officers, in your Commanders and in our General. Everything we do is to prepare you. All our resources are being ploughed into this operation. You must be confident that you will have the best training, the best technology and weapons at your disposal. When it is time, you will know everything that you need to. The safety of our civilians, of your families, is in our hands. All you need to know is, we will not fail.”

  She spoke with a quiet confidence, causing the murmurs to drop away to silence as the group strained to make out her words. She had never struck Dane as a passionate woman. Seraphine was the enthusiastic one out of the pair. Officer Williams was reserved and only spoke when issuing an order, yet her words were poised, with belief and passion, and the squad nodded their heads, as if in agreement.

  Neha looked down at the ground, her cheeks colouring slightly.

  “I’m sorry,” She said dejectedly. “It’s just nerves.”

  “It’s ok,” Officer Williams said coolly. “I’d be concerned if none of you felt nervous, but now is the time for teamwork and patriotism. We’re here to do a job.”

  A murmur of agreement, more enthusiastic this time, went up around the camp.

  “The tents need to come down,” The Officer continued. “Pack them up and leave them in the treeline. The Attendants will be out to take them away later. We’re spending the next week in the mountains, and Neha, you’ve just volunteered yourself for the first exercise. Choose someone to work with you.”

  Neha frowned at this, but nodded, accepting her forfeit for speaking out of turn. She looked around her before settling her gaze on Gia.

  “I choose Gia.”

  Gia nodded in acknowledgment, but her face gave away no emotional reaction.

  “Take some pills from the box, enough for a week,” Officer Williams instructed them. “Your task is to evade the rest of us for as long as possible.”

  “What?” Neha wrinkled her nose in confusion. “Indefinitely?”

  “I’ll buzz you if we can’t find you in a week,” Officer Williams said dryly. “But we will. The weeks of training should have paid off and I should be leading a team of professional hunters by now.”

  “You can track us with these anyway.” Gia pulled a face and held her wrist up to illustrate her point.

  Officer Williams’ nostrils flared slightly in irritation.

  “I’ll simply be observing.” She replied. “There will be no technology.”

  Gia raised an eyebrow and turned to Neha. “You ready?”

  “Now?” Neha looked startled.

  “Now.” The Officer confirmed. “Eight-hour head start.”

  And as simply as that the team were launched into their first simulation.

  The squad was now down to thirteen with the absence of the tech team, the Officers, Neha and Gia, Dane noticed as they sat talking through strategies. It would be like looking for a needle in a haystack. Where would they even begin?

  They hypothesised, trying to think like someone hiding would. They agreed that the women would want to put as much ground between them in their head start, and they would be actively looking for somewhere to lay low for the duration if possible. The difficulty would be the lack of communication. They were a large team, and it would make sense to split up and cover more ground.

  “If we started a fire,” Faith suggested. “We could use smoke to signal they’ve been located.”

  They paired off, with Faith, Niall and another woman making up the team of three and headed off to hunt their prey. It sounded exciting in theory, but Dane quickly realised that it would entail little more than walking for miles and camping
under the stars. The sky was beautiful at night; a cloudless, inky-blue, dotted with thousands of tiny pinpricks of light. They were exploring the largest mountain in the sprawling range, and they climbed as high as they physically could, using their vantage point to look out at Apatia spread below them.

  “Where do you think we are?” Matt, Dane’s partner in the hunt, asked idly as they sat, taking a break to watch the sunset over the valley below.

  “We’re in the northern territory.” Dane replied confidently.

  He’d been thinking about it for a while, trying to use the natural clues to work it out, but up here, he could clearly see the lush greenness of the land for possibly a hundred miles. Despite the lack of nature in his home territory, Dane knew that the scorching sun wouldn’t nourish this land alone. There needed to be an abundance of rainfall for this to flourish. He turned in a slow arc, looking towards the sun in the west. He could picture a map of Apatia in his mind and was sure that if he continued to travel North he would reach the ocean that bordered the country within less than one hundred miles. Latheia lay a mere seven thousand miles to the East of Northern Apatia. This would be the logical place for them to enter the country, he realised with a start. The whole state was bordered solely by coastline, but the wealth of forest here, where the climate was cooler, and the rainy seasons came every year, provided the most cover. The ocean between Latheia and Apatia was home to a number of small independent countries. Latheia could move a fleet of submarines or aircraft between these, whereas to the East or West there were less opportunities to disguise an approaching army.

  Matt nodded his head. “It seems crazy that Latheia would even try a physical invasion, doesn’t it? It’s almost laughable.”

  Dane had to agree. Despite Apatia keeping an active military, the last real war had been almost a hundred years ago. It was even called that: “The Last War”. Nuclear weapons had wiped out a whole continent and the whole world had changed since then, seemingly learning from history that politics and greed achieved nothing, but then the biological attack to Apatia came. Apatia, still sombre from The Last War, closed her borders instead of retaliating and the country set about repairing the damage with quiet dignity. If it wasn’t for Latheia, Dane couldn’t help but think, there would have been no need for the frantic interventions that churned out replacement citizens at a staggering rate, causing the devastating loss of his sister.

  He felt anger prickle underneath the surface of his skin. It didn’t matter how many years passed, the emotions attached to Arielle’s memory were still powerful enough to trigger a physical reaction. He rose to his feet, feeling the weight of the knife at his hip. He wrapped his fingers around the handle and drew the blade from its sheath. The naked knife glinted in the rays of the sun’s final moments. His hands were rough and calloused from their training and he pressed the flat of the blade against his palm. Even in uncontrollable anger, he didn’t know whether he could bring himself to take someone’s life.

  “Is that smoke?” Matt interrupted his thoughts and Dane turned to look, following Matt’s outstretched arm in the direction of the woodland next to the open plain where they had camped.

  Dane squinted, making out a dark grey spiral in the dimming light.

  “I think so.” He agreed.

  He glanced at his wrist-device, wondering whether Officer Williams would send them all a recall to cut the task short or whether she’d just leave them out here, out of her hair and honing their skills until it was time to return to the Command Centre.

  “Shall we go and have a look?” Matt wondered aloud.

  It was sunset already, and Dane didn’t fancy descending the mountain in darkness. It had taken them days to get here. He shook his head, explaining his reasoning and was relieved when Matt agreed. They started to move away from the mountain edge, heading to slightly-covered ground that they had scouted out earlier. They unpacked their sleeping bags and settled down for the night.

  “We’ll start moving down at first light.” Dane said before closing his eyes against the night.

  He woke in the night, jerking into consciousness with alarm. His instincts were telling him that something was very wrong, and he slid to his feet, shedding the nylon bag like a skin. He glanced over at Matt, his sleeping form and steady breathing calming Dane a little.

  No, not Matt. Something else. The voice inside Dane told him.

  He tightened the belt, holstering his weapons, and stood stock-still, listening for anything that would help him to identify the threat he could sense. The songs of nature were still foreign to him, especially at night when the darkness gave even the frivolous chirp of insects a sinister undertone.

  Frustration with himself clouded his judgment. Why couldn’t he tell what was out there? He debated whether to wake Matt, but his pride discouraged him. If it transpired that he was just paranoid and on edge, he’d feel foolish and would have disturbed Matt’s sleep for nothing.

  He edged away from their camp, his hand touched the knife lightly before withdrawing the stun-gun and flicking the beam from ‘Kill’ to ‘Stun Only’ lest he accidentally stumble upon one of his teammates. He moved silently, his back against the cliff face, keeping Matt and their camp within sight. He scoured the ground for any threat, but there was nowhere for anyone to hide and he stepped forward, catching sight of the night sky for the first time. A blaze of orange lit up the horizon and Dane forgot his furtiveness, moving quickly to the edge where he had sat earlier with Matt.

  The woods below was a sea of aggressive flames, black smoke billowing into the cloudless night. He could hear the roar of the fire, even from miles away, as the breeze carried the sounds across the plains and fanned the vicious destruction. Perception was skewed from their height and Dane couldn’t tell how much of the land was ablaze.

  He rushed back to wake Matt, looking down at the useless device strapped to his wrist, desperately wondering if any help would come.

  FIFTEEN

  There was little more that Dane and Matt could do than watch the carpet of flames rip through the land ahead of them. Black clouds of smoke billowed angrily against a blazing sky of red as the soldiers checked and rechecked their wrist devices, desperately praying for the intervention to come, terrified for the lives and the safety of their colleagues.

  It seemed like hours that they sat there, watching the fire sweep past the foot of their mountain. The craggy rockface, bare of anything except the sparsest, hardiest shrubs, was of no interest to the flames. The blaze rushed past them, intent on consuming the path with the most to offer it. Even from their considerable distance, Dane could see the height of the flames were growing, doubling their reach. Dane felt his heart in his mouth as he realised that there was nothing that would stop it now. It had hundreds of miles to rip through before it reached the nearest city, but at the rate that it was growing, and spreading in all directions, Dane thought that it could arrive there in maybe just days.

  “We need to do something.” He said, agitation growing at their helplessness. “The team are down there.”

  “Do what?” Matt was pacing too. The feeling of utter uselessness was overwhelming, “The smoke would suffocate us before the flames even touched us. It’s too powerful.”

  “I know, I know.” Dane groaned in frustration. “It hasn’t touched the mountains. We can pray that they’ve all got to safety.”

  The sky was starting to lighten now as dawn approached, but the skyline was strikingly different. A sinister glow tinged the usually peaceful day break as the fire continued to blaze. Dane and Matt made their way down the mountain in the strange half-light, picking their path carefully despite their haste. The air was heavy with the smell of smoke as they lowered themselves across a narrow crevice a little over two thirds of the way down the colossal elevation.

  “Dane!”

  A stunned cry travelled across the rocky ground towards Dane and Matt, and they turned to the noise.

  Seven of the team were huddled together, taking refuge on
the mountain. Their faces stained with the ash from the smoke and their eyes red-rimmed and fearful.

  “What happened?” Dane asked them as they neared the group. “Is there anyone else with you?”

  He could see that there was nobody, but he was clinging to the hope that there would be more survivors.

  Faith shook her head. Her hair had come loose from the elastic band and was streaked with dirt, matching the stripes of soot across her cheekbones.

  “We saw smoke last night and made our way towards it,” She said. “We were moving through the woods when the fire started. We managed to get up here to safety, but everything down there is gone.”

  “They could have made it to safety.” Dane said, his hopeful words ringing empty in his ears as he said them.

  Faith blinked and looked away, but not before he’d seen the worry in her eyes.

  “We were making our way towards the fire,” Niall said gently, placing a hand gently on Dane’s shoulder. “Towards whoever was signalling that they’d found the others. It’s gone now. Razed to the ground. This was the only place to run.”

  Dane nodded, understanding what Niall was telling him. He pictured the faces of those that were missing; his friends, his squad, but it was the image of Gia, her face pinched with her troubles and streaked with tears, hunched over and staring at this very mountain, that stayed fresh in his mind.

  “They must know.” Dane said suddenly, thinking of how every move was observed. “They must know that we’re trapped on the mountain and the fire is out of control. Why aren’t they coming?”

  The expressions on the face of his team told him that the same thoughts had crossed their minds and the camp fell silent. They sat together, backs against the rockface, watching as the land beneath them glowed a violent orange into the distance. The plumes of smoke were still thick, obscuring the landscape, and the ground in front of them was scorched black, little left to burn and so the flames died away. The air was acrid and heavy, and the crackles of devastation could be heard, although muted and soft from this distance.