Blind Sighted: Navigator Book Two

by SD Tanner

  Critters were streaming around both sides of the house and attacking Tank, who was defending the children clutching his legs. The woman Tank had managed to pull from the room was curled into a fetal position three feet from the wall. Critters slid over her and into the hole in the wall, until one stopped and tore into her back. With auto targeting on, Tank didn’t need to aim and was using one arm to fire continuously, while using the other to punch any critter that came within his reach.

  Lexie cleared the fence in a single leap, landing about eight feet from their position. Immediately grabbing a critter, she slammed it into the hard earth, crushing it on impact. Following closely behind her, one of their trucks tore open the fence as it broke into the backyard. Splintered wood flew into the air and the fence collapsed under the weight of the vehicle. The gunner fired at the critters around them and the back door of the truck was already open. While they scrambled for the doors, Tank scooped up the children and moved as quickly as his heavy gear allowed towards the truck. Grabbing the kids from him, they pushed them inside and then climbed into the vehicle.

  “Where’s the other truck?”

  “I sent it onward. We’ll catch it up,” Jenna replied steadily. “We’ve gotta get outta here.”

  He felt the truck lurch slightly and assumed Tank and Lexie had climbed onto the roof. Nudging Trigger sharply, he said, “We can’t get the people outta their houses this way. It’s too risky.”

  Trigger nodded. “Nope, we haven’t got enough manpower…or firepower for this.”

  Through his earpiece, he said, “We’re on our way back.”

  “Roger that,” Ark replied.

  CHAPTER TWO: Leading the blind (Bill)

  Dunk’s office was on the top floor of the main building in CaliTech. It was a large room with a long glass window and a generous silver and chrome desk at one end. There was a long meeting table against the sidewall next to it, and a white screen covered with multicolored scrawls bolted to the wall behind it, but it wasn’t the office furniture that had caught his attention.

  Three Navigator suits hung on stands against the far wall opposite the desk, and in front of each was a table with helmets, visors, gloves and boots. A long narrow table against the sidewall had a row of the partial guns he’d seen attached to the suits, and there was an untidy pile of depleted-uranium tipped hollow point bullets lying next to them. Hanging from the wall behind the guns were various heavy plates with straps, which he assumed was the additional armor.

  While he stood staring at the suits, Dunk walked across the large room. “You must be the Colonel.”

  “There’s no army left. Just call me Bill.”

  Joining him to admire the Navigator gear, he replied, “You can call me Dunk. It’s what everyone else here calls me, just try not to add skunk on the end.”

  The workers in CaliTech called him Dunk the Skunk, and rather than be offended by his less than flattering nickname it appeared to amuse him. After spending almost a week at CaliTech, he was astounded by the technology. Although he’d walked the halls of the Pentagon, he’d never even heard of the term Navigator and wondered which division had funded such an ambitious program.

  “How have you done this?”

  “Done what?”

  “Built a multi-billion dollar empire prototyping such advanced tech.”

  Dunk chuckled and indicated they should sit at the long meeting table. Once they were seated, he leaned back in his chair and regarded him with sharp, intelligent eyes. “Doesn’t it piss you off?”

  “What?”

  “Losing good soldiers to a poorly equipped enemy.”

  Knowing what Dunk was referring to, he nodded. “Yeah, but they use what little they’ve got cunningly. They fuck us up with a bit of C4 and a cell phone.”

  “Exactly, but we’re smarter than that. A dumb enemy should never best a smart one. Survival of the fittest is the first rule of domination and smart is fitter than dumb.”

  “Don’t underestimate determination.”

  Dunk raised his eyebrows in surprise. “What? Don’t you think we’re determined? The Chinese say every generation is a link in a chain, so each of us is the culmination of everyone who came before us. The only reason we’re here is because of the determination of our ancestors.”

  He understood Dunk’s point, but he didn’t quite see it the same way. “Too much good living has made us soft.”

  “Bullshit. We just haven’t been pushed hard enough…until now.” Waving his hand at the Navigator suits, he added, “I designed this tech to make us the most powerful army on earth. Through superior technology our soldiers will be stronger, faster, better armed, and have more information than our enemy will ever have.” Narrowing his eyes, he leaned closer to him. “I’m sick of losing. We don’t have to and we shouldn’t. If you push a strong person too far eventually they’ll choose to die rather than let you win.”

  He’d been told Dunk was an asshole, but he found himself warming to the man. “How does the gear work?”

  Dunk walked across to the suits hanging on their stands. A Navigator suit was made up of three separate layers. The sensor layer was a heavy black mesh, with fine wires and contact points at key positions on the body. The interlocking metal rods that made up hydraulics layer were contained inside a spongy thick fabric that reminded him of a wet suit. The final layer was a series of connected panels filled with liquid armor designed to harden on impact. Strapping weapons and additional protection on top of these three layers made the gear almost impenetrable.

  Picking up a black helmet from the table, Dunk studied it critically. “Initially I wanted advanced vision and that led me to the visors. They’re basically scanners with onboard computers and communications. The software inside the visor is able to interpret what’s around it, no matter what it may be hiding behind.”

  “Why did you replace Lexie’s eyes with orbs?”

  “The orbs are for speed of processing. They communicate information directly to her brain through her optical nerve. She’s really as blind as she ever was, but the orbs are feeding data from the cameras in her visor and helmet directly to her brain. You don’t need the orbs to use the visor, but under battle conditions you won’t be able to process what you’re seeing fast enough. It’s a translation and speed of information acquisition problem. A nav with orbs will always be able to process the data faster than one without them.”

  While he was talking, a thin woman with dark hair had walked into the room. She had a deeply lined face, and she moved with an air of restrained anxiety. Nodding to her, Dunk said, “This is Sally. She’s CaliTech’s psychologist. Her job is to understand the effects of the technology on the human condition.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Speaking in a clipped and precise way, she replied, “The nav gear changes everything about a person’s capabilities. They can see, move and do things in a way that isn’t humanly possible, but the mind works to the limitations we’re taught from the moment we’re born. Changing these baseline assumptions inside of the human mind is complicated.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Some people become overconfident and others don’t maximize the capability. We’re developing training techniques to overcome these typical human responses.” She looked at the three Navigator suits contemplatively. “And not all navs are the same. Different types of navs need different temperaments, and therefore different psychological testing and training.”

  “How do they vary?”

  Dunk replied for her. “The smaller, lighter armored navs like Lexie are what we call fully functional. They have advanced vision and fast processing thanks to the orbs, but are blind without their visors. The larger, more heavily armored tanks were meant to follow and protect the lighter navs, but the army still weren’t happy with the idea of using blinded soldiers, so we designed a middle level. They’re not as heavily armored, carry less weapons than a tank, and they don’t need orbs for a degree of advanced vision. Unlike Lexie, th
ey don’t take a direct feed to the brain, but they’re still able to see through barriers and up to three miles away.”

  “But there’s a problem,” Sally interrupted. “Only specific psychological profiles can process the data fast enough to interpret it in time to react under stress situations.”

  “Do you have any navs that can do that?”

  Sally and Dunk shared a brief look and he replied, “No. We have navs who can process the data without having the orbs, but they don’t react fast enough under combat conditions.”

  In his experience, a smart soldier knew when to adapt and a determined one did it quickly, exploiting whatever he or she had at hand. The visors provided a soldier with more information than they’d ever had, and it was only a question of knowing what to do with it. He couldn’t see why a smart soldier couldn’t process more of the available data and react accordingly.

  “How have you been testing the mid-range nav gear?”

  “We’ve used a mix of civilians and ex-military. So far, they either don’t process the data fast enough or they don’t know what to do with the data when they get it.”

  He harrumphed. “You need smart soldiers.” When they looked at him quizzically, he added, “Speed of processing information is a combination of IQ and training. You need the brains to acquire and interpret information, and the training to react quickly enough to emergent situations. That’s a smart soldier.”

  Dunk gave him a wide grin. “Have you got any of those?”

  “I don’t have any troops anymore,” he replied dourly.

  “What about the squad that arrived here a week ago?”

  “There’s no command structure left, so they don’t have to do anything I tell them to do.”

  “But they’re here,” Sally said softly.

  With a cynical snort, he replied, “Yeah, because here is safe.”

  Her heavily lined face creased deeply with a smile. “They went outside of the walls to look for civilian survivors, so they’re still acting as soldiers defending their country.” Touching his arm gently, she added, “You might not have the rank to give them orders, but you can still guide them. It’s the same job, just without the formal control.”

  Only a bad leader managed his troops by bullying them, and the best of them led from the front, sharing their risks. He might never have covered himself in medals, but he’d always been a steady commander who could be relied upon in a crisis. However, his leadership skills didn’t give him any credibility in the eyes of Leon and his squad.

  When he said nothing, she gave him steady look and asked, “If you were in command, what would you be doing right now?”

  “I’d be taking an inventory of what we have in terms of weapons and troops. I’d identify our enemy’s positions, strengths and weaknesses. I’d plan how to weaken the enemy at least cost to ourselves.” Pausing reflectively, he added sharply, “And I’d go to NORAD and tell ‘em to stop bombing our cities.”

  “So, what’s stopping you from doing all of those things?”

  “I don’t have any troops,” he replied uncertainly. When Sally smiled again, he added thoughtfully, “But if you build it they will come.”

  After their recon of the nest in Pueblo Pintado, they’d realized the enemy was not only hard to kill, but they could also survive underground and were able to fly. It had meant an aerial recon would be dangerous, and CaliTech’s two helicopters were now grounded. Leon and his squad had then gone to the suburbs at the request of Ark and the CaliTech staff. Their mission had failed, but they’d learned their enemy had a weapon of their own in the form of a glowing, sticky goo.

  He needed more information about the nest and NORAD had to stop bombing the cities. Equally, he needed capable troops, and that meant he’d need men and women who could learn how to use the Navigator gear. Even if he could convince Leon to follow his leadership, he knew he didn’t have enough of an army to win. He had too few soldiers, inadequate weapons, and too many enemies. Since arriving at CaliTech a week earlier, he hadn’t known what to do next. According to his role in the bunker, he was supposed to deploy troops to protect their homeland, but he didn’t have an army. The collapse of the country was something he wasn’t prepared to accept, and he ran his hand through his hair, unable to explain how angry he was about what had happened.

  Dunk leaned closer to him and said, “CaliTech is not a military base. We’re engineers. I even have a cryogenics lab in another underground bunker.”

  “So?”

  “We’re a weapons research and development facility.”

  “How does that help?”

  “It comes back to survival of the fittest. The smartest and the most determined should always win. Do you think a bunch of over-sized cockroaches are smarter than us?”

  He still didn’t understand what Dunk was driving at. “A lion is dumber than a human, but it usually wins unless you happen to have a pretty big gun.”

  Sally sighed and she gave Dunk a weary look. “Duncan is not just the CEO of CaliTech, he’s the Chief Engineer. What he’s trying to tell you is that you can have whatever weapons you need. This is a research facility filled with weapons designers. You only have to tell us what you want.”

  He gave Dunk a puzzled look. “You know it takes a fifty cal or higher to kill them, so we need bigger guns, but we can scavenge those from the military bases.”

  Dunk shook his head and sighed deeply. “Sometimes hitting something harder isn’t the best solution. You should check out our weapons division. You might be surprised at what we’re working on in there.”

  CHAPTER THREE: Unplanned parenthood (Ark)

  The training hangar was a wide rectangle a quarter of a mile long. Inside it were lasers able to create three-dimensional images that interacted with the Navigator visors to create a virtual reality, and they were trained using simulated battle conditions that only they could see. A collection of platforms and narrow bars sat across the concrete floor and ceiling, and they used them to teach Navigators to jump and balance using their hydraulics. He’d used this facility to train Tank and Lexie, including firing live rounds at them.

  Now he was sitting inside the huge training hangar, studying screens showing him what Tank and Lexie were seeing through their visors. The discovery of the goo had confused him. The visor scanners hadn’t been able to detect it, but some was still attached to Tank’s armor when he’d returned from their mission to the suburbs. The medical techs were analyzing it now and he was waiting for an initial briefing.

  “There’s a lot of critters in that shed,” Lexie remarked unhappily.

  The people who’d turned at CaliTech were put into what was now known as the spider shed, and she and Tank were standing outside of it getting ready to catch one and bring it into the training hangar. He’d only ever seen the critters through their visors and he wanted to see one for real. Based on the eyewitness account Jonesy had given him, the critters had started as human, but evolved by shedding their skin like snakes. Anything that was able to transform human DNA that way was a very smart species, and Leon’s recon of the nest had shown him there was more than one type. He suspected the critters would continue to adapt and they were going to need very different weapons to defeat them.

  Tank was holding a set of heavy chains, and he said, “C’mon, Lex, let’s get it done.”

  The spider shed was actually a single story, red brick building with no windows, and a set of double doors. Being eighty by eighty-feet, it was basically a box originally used to store excess equipment from the training hangar. Over the past few weeks, they’d thrown at least thirty people into the shed and it was now full of green blobs. Being blind, Lexie’s onboard computers captured more data than she could ever see, and he used a toggle to adjust the spectrum view, giving him a clearer visual. The three-dimensional screen switched modes, and the black critters inside the room were moving sluggishly. At least twenty of them were packed tightly into one corner, some were clinging to the ceiling, and others were skul
king about on the floor.

  “Just get in and get out. Grab me the first one you get.”

  Tank opened the door and Lexie stepped inside. The critters howled, and he immediately turned the sound down on his speakers. The static noise they made was piercing and it wrecked his concentration. Lexie’s heart rate had jumped to around one hundred and thirty, but Tank was stomping into the room with no discernable change in his stress levels. While Lexie grabbed the attacking critters, smashing them into the concrete floor, Tank wrestled one to the ground and wrapped it in chains.

  “Don’t kill them all, Lexie. We need them.”

  “Why don’t you come in here and do it yourself?”

  He wished he could. Losing both of his legs from the knees down had meant he could still walk using prosthetics, but that was all he could do. One of the engineering teams were combining the hydraulics with robotic limbs, and he was quietly optimistic they might get him back on his feet. Being deployed four times, he’d always known he could be wounded, but like everyone else, he’d assumed it wouldn’t happen to him. Losing his legs and half of his face had been a shock. He could accept he now looked like hell, but it was the loss of his legs that really got to him. The army psychologist had said he was lucky to be alive and he didn’t disagree, but that didn’t stop him from wanting to run. Now only able to live outside of CaliTech through Lexie, he would watch her perform the hydraulics training routine and imagine himself making every move with her.

  “Very funny,” he replied dourly.