Fear the Survivors

by Stephen Moss

  General Milton: ‘i see that you are en route and clear of rolas. if i may, major, i would like to address everyone.’

  It was not really a question, and the general did not wait for a reply. The general spoke from his and Neal’s command post on Rolas, his mind wired in the command matrix Minnie had constructed for the mission. He would be in overall control of the operation.

  General Milton: ‘to all the team leads, spezialists, and pilots, i would like to welcome you all to operation arrowhead. we are, as you know, en route to central europe. we have been tasked by our allies in europe to establish a perimeter block on further russian advancement. i do not need to tell you the importance of that mission. what i do need to tell you is that we do not engage any ordinary force.’

  None of the highly trained members of the force now exceeding five hundred miles an hour over the plains of the Sahara desert would ever have mistaken the Russian Army for anything other than one of the most deadly fighting forces on the planet. Economic struggles had done little to dull the nation’s appetite for military might, and in recent years they had enjoyed a resurgence to something close to their Cold War status among the world’s leading military powers.

  But General Milton spoke of something else entirely. Something that had been kept a closely guarded secret, and the reason for Europe’s absolute insistence that TASC forces become involved.

  General Milton: ‘men and women of operation arrowhead, we face today not just the military might of the russian army and air force, we face some measure of the same brutally effective technology we have all come to assume was ours alone.’

  There was not a man or woman aboard any of the C-17s or StratoJets that did not tense at the news.

  General Milton: ‘i mean not to alarm you. nor to assuage you from the task ahead. for when i talk of their technology, i speak only of the armor you wear, and some attempt at matching the air domination our StratoJet fleet brings. but they have nothing close to our communications ability, and they do not have minnie. in short, while they may be as hardy as us, they will not be nearly as fast or well trained as you all are. and as you all know, with training comes excellence, and with excellence … comes victory.’

  He wanted to shout those last words. To show the full force of his confidence in their ability. Confidence he did not have to feign. But he was not one for long speeches. He was one for keeping his people informed, and so, his brief morale boost finished, he moved now to what they really needed and released a substantial data packet to every member of the mission, a hefty swarm of data covering everything they knew of the Russian’s handle on Mobiliei tech, and a complete analysis of each and every tactical ability those tech-enabled forces possessed.

  General Milton: ‘i will leave you, for now, with the full analysis we have prepared on their new capabilities. study it, please. work with your team leads to discuss and model how you will incorporate the data into your individual team’s capabilities and strike patterns. pilots, you have five hours till you are released for active air engagement. strike teams, you have six till drop zone. commander zubaideh and major toranssen will reach out to the air and ground wings respectively with force deployments shortly, and i will speak to all again when we get closer to engagement. good luck, and god speed.’

  He cut off the connection and lay back in his cradle, opening a dedicated link to Ayala. She was travelling with the force, cradled inside one of the armored Boxers, much to his chagrin. Discussion of who should go on the mission had been the subject of fierce debate among Neal’s senior leadership. In theory, none of them had to go. In theory, only the shock troops needed to be on the actual ground as all other operations could be managed remotely and instantaneously via subspace tweeter from the safety of Rolas Base. But Ayala had had absolutely no intention of sending her people into battle if their senior officer wasn’t willing to risk her life alongside them.

  So she occupied one of the stocky GTK Boxers. This did give some tactical benefits: should the Russians attack the satellite subspace network in an attempt to cut communications, then Ayala would remain close enough to the action to still provide command oversight. It was slight, but it had been the crux of an argument Barrett quickly realized he wasn’t going to win.

  From the pilots’ perspectives, the StratoJets were not the Skalms, and though they were extremely fast, a sedated pilot could safely survive its maneuvers allowing them to pilot from onboard. Barrett and Jack had considered centralizing all the pilots to the C-17s, but that would make them a singular tactical weak spot: the Russians need only take out the big support planes and the StratoJet fleet would be dead in the air.

  But as with Ayala, in the end it was not a difficult choice for any of Jack’s pilot core; better to rely on your own skill and training in battle than anything else, and they had unanimously chosen to be onboard their planes for the engagement.

  There were, however, several notable exceptions to that rule, and back amongst the concrete safety of Rolas Island two of those exceptions busied themselves.

  One was talking to Neal Danielson while they waited for the real battle to begin. The other was lying prone on a mesh couch, plugged into the net, playing games with her friend Minnie. It was a rolling simulation which they played for hours every day: Banu was a white barn owl presiding over a huge, well-used red barn, and Minnie was a series of darting rabbits scurrying this way and that for her to chase.

  “Quavoce,” said Neal, out of Banu’s earshot, “I understand your concerns, I do, but surely we should let her remote-pilot one of the StratoJets for a while. She is more capable than any of our other pilots.”

  Quavoce nodded but did not agree. He was trying to be reasonable, though he had little intention of actually allowing it. Neal focused his eyes on the former Mobiliei Agent. Even now, Quavoce was remotely piloting one of the jets, as was John Hunt, from around the world at the Research Center in Japan. For her part, Minnie had taken on two StratoJets herself, her divided attention still nearly as good as either of the Agents, and better than any of the rest of Jack Toranssen’s flight wing.

  Once the fighting started, they would give it their full attention. The only question remained: would the best human pilot be fighting alongside them?

  - - -

  Banu darted down from an eave in a broad, sun-dappled barn, shafts of light partially illuminating the dusty, straw ridden floor. Stables and stalls that lined the walls, some with low-slung doors, some without. The aging wooden planks of the walls and sloping ceiling allowed deep orange shafts of setting sun to leak between their fingers.

  The light betrayed occasional, brief sightings of Banu’s prey as they scuttled this way and that.

  - - -

  “I understand your perspective, Neal,” replied Quavoce, “and appreciate that she is, indeed, our best pilot. But she is also a six-year-old girl, and one who has already, I think, suffered enough.”

  - - -

  She saw it, her big eyes whipping around. There was only a moment’s hesitation. Did she have enough time to catch it before it escaped? Her decision came to life as pure movement, she flung herself forward, powerful wings flashing out and wrenching at the air, thrusting her downward.

  Banu propelled herself down from her perch toward the sprinting hare trying to reach the safety of a gap in one of the stable’s walls. She flew straight at one of the stable’s doors, barely ajar. She was unafraid, batting her powerful wings hard to twist her body as she flew through the improbably thin gap. The hare’s furry hind legs scrabbled for purchase as it sped toward sanctity. It would be close. It always was. She exalted in it.

  - - -

  “I am not calling for her to be sent into battle yet, my friend,” said Neal, gently, but insistently, “but if we engage with any significant air resistance, she would an invaluable asset.”

  Asset. That was what so scared Quavoce. He had allowed military exigency to rule his world too long. Almost to the point of damning the very race he now sought to defend.
But he had seen, almost too late, that the ends do not justify the means, not always.

  “I worry at the cost to her, Neal. I know it seems … trivial … in the greater scheme. But …”

  - - -

  She was flying at breakneck speed as she angled herself back and reached out with her talons, extending them forward with a grace that was visually stunning. Minnie watched Banu and knew it was beautiful as the young girl’s claws found their mark, sinking into the hare’s back, only centimeters from its escape, Banu’s wing tips brushing the wall rearing up in front of her, eddies of dust and straw drawing up and around as she reversed her momentum with all of her strength.

  - - -

  “No, Quavoce. No. It does not seem trivial at all.” Neal could not deny his own affection for the young girl that had come to live amongst them. Nor would he dare question for one moment Quavoce’s clearly far greater commitment to her safety. “But she has trained as a pilot these past months for a reason. I wish we did not need her. But we do. And you know as well as I do that we will need thousands more like her before we are done.”

  - - -

  Banu had timed it to perfection, and Minnie looked on as once again the white owl drew its prey back into the air, up and out of the small stable, up into the eaves of the barn. Banu’s barn. Her domain. Minnie was teasing Banu ever more, testing and training the limits of her abilities, as she did for hours every day. She was not sure which of them enjoyed it more.

  - - -

  Quavoce looked at Neal, not dulling the weight of his emotions one bit as he said, “Okay, Neal, okay. I will let her stand in for one of the major’s pilots should the StratoJets get into deep water, but I will not have her engage ground troops. That would be too … I will not have her firing on people, not yet, maybe not ever. Is that understood?”

  Neal nodded, satisfied with the compromise for now.

  - - -

  Banu came to rest on her eave once more. The master of the barn. She was brimming with pride.

  As Banu rested her mighty wings she placed the now limp body of the hare on the eave next to her, along with her other catches.

  At some level, she understood that they were simulated animals, and that she had killed them. Goodness knows her first five years on a family farm had come with their fair share of butchery. But as a young girl she had never done the killing herself. Here in the simulation, as when she had lived in rural Iran, those that cared for her spared her the final gasps and struggles of life’s final ebb.

  Despite their best intentions, though, Minnie and Quavoce would have no such control over what happened in the raw reality of the coming battle.

  Chapter 42: A Brief Engagement

  General Milton: ‘air wing, it’s time for you to move off. major toranssen, accelerate and engage, flight plan theta. good luck, everyone.’

  Major Toranssen: ‘thank you, general. stratojets, accelerate to mach 3, on my mark. flight plan theta, coordinates on net. quavoce, you have squadron bravo; john, you have squadron charlie. squadron alpha, you are with me. engage.’

  The thirty jets all ramped up their speed as one, rocketing away from the three massive airlifters as though they were all but standing still. They had been forced to fly not only slower, but significantly lower than their optimal cruise altitude to keep convoy with the burly heavy-lifters.

  Despite these shackles, they did not climb now that they were taken off the leash, but actually began to descend as they accelerated, their progress through the thickening atmosphere marked by grey shockwaves emanating from their tails, the thunderous double clap of their hypersonic progress buffeting the ground below.

  They were over the Ionian when they broke formation, and the StratoJets penetrated Montenegrin airspace in a matter of minutes, on the heels of a series of calls to its government, and its former Yugoslav neighbors, explaining the very unsubtle incursion into their sovereign air. It was not a request they could refuse, and nor would they, given their own long exile from freedom under the last Russian empire.

  Before the calls were even complete, the bleeding edge of the fleet was already gone. Two hundred miles covered in four minutes. They were past Bosnia, past Serbia, bisecting Romania, and splitting already into their three arms. Ready for first contact.

  As the bodies of the C-17s came hulking up behind at their molasses pace, the Russian forces were starting to hear rumor of the fleet coming up over the Mediterranean. But by then the StratoJets were already closing, coming in low and hard at the Russian columns.

  Toranssen: ‘quavoce, john, i have confirmation from strategic command in stuttgart that the russian’s have crossed the hungarian border. we are officially clear to engage any and all targets west of the line.’

  The border resolved in their minds, and then on into the minds of all the pilots in each wing. Clarification of a line of demarcation long since anticipated.

  Toranssen: ‘we are cleared weapons hot. good luck, gentlemen. keep channels open, flag if engaged by tech-ten units.’

  Tech-ten: the byword for the evolutional leap in technology that they may face here. The two Agents confirmed, and then each squadron banked and swerved smoothly away, three wings of weaponized fury soaring away at meteoric speeds.

  Separate now, Jack narrowed his comms to his team and talked them into the approach.

  Toranssen: ‘alpha squadron, on me, strafing run, parallels. alphas nine and ten on firewall. let’s open them up.’

  The fighters did not slow. The Russian columns had long since split into three to fill the three main roads that linked Hungary to Ukraine. Each of Jack’s squadrons was targeted to a column. The leading Russian tanks and APCs in Jack’s column were already six miles over the border, and still coming.

  Six miles. That would be Jack’s first strafing run. It would be over in fourteen seconds.

  He targeted with cold precision, not on individual vehicles, but on the entire left lane of the two-lane road. The next in his squadron would target the right lane, the third back to the left again, and so back along his squadron, four planes pounding each lane. The last two planes in his squadron had different orders.

  As Jack saw the first big T-90 battle tanks that led the column, he counted the milliseconds down to fire range. Then, angling his plane so he could maintain downward fire for the full six miles, Jack unleashed his guns.

  His speed noticeably faltered as the momentum of his plane was thrown into the thousands of tiny pellets being railed out of the ports on his plane’s nose.

  A Russian commander, exposed from the waist up as he surveyed their progress from the main hatch of his battle tank, spotted the inbound planes. He had the fortitude and time to say, “Incomi …!” before a sheaf of kinetic destruction ripped along the top of his tank, rending its armor, pulping his head and torso, and echoing throughout the hull of the mighty beast before grinding onward along the line.

  Fourteen seconds. Over a million rounds. A line of death and mayhem burnt along the unsuspecting Russian forces like a blade made of lightning. But the Russians would not remain pliant for long. Jack knew that. Somewhere in these columns, he could not know where, was the real threat. Any moment it could spring on them. And that was saying nothing for the still potent standard weaponry the Russian Army had on hand.

  Toranssen: ‘alpha nine and ten, wall of fire.’

  They were already on it. While eight of Jack’s squadron had surged on with blistering speed, the last two planes had come to a thundering halt in front of the first of the T-90s. The big tanks were bruised by the initial strafing run, but far from done, and they were still trundling on, smoke rippling from their hulls as their crews scrambled to respond to the sudden attack.

  Alpha Nine and Ten were there to stop them. Permanently. To stop them and anyone else that came on behind them, and to let their burning hulks pile up and block the column from progressing any farther.

  Alpha Nine: ‘wall of fire. with pleasure, major. lighting them up now.’

 
Hovering over the road in front of the column, the two StratoJets concentrated their guns on each of the two lead tanks in turn. Not glancing blows, but a supercharged kinetic maelstrom. The pellets turned even the tank’s thick armor to liquid. Ambitious souls aboard the tanks attempted to return fire, to engage with the broad complement of anti-air and even anti-personnel munitions mounted on the burly brawlers. But they were very much in the wrong place at the wrong time. They were on the receiving end of power station’s worth of energetic release and their tank’s bodies began to heat and slag under the barrage.

  To add insult to pervasive injury, each StratoJet then unleashed one of their Brimstone missiles at their respective targets, the stumpy rockets flying under the tanks and then detonating. The tanks lifted and buckled, as if shrugging at the impossibility of their position as punished armor and tarmac alike were shredded and destroyed.

  Soon two columns of smoke and flame were rising at the head of the suddenly halted line of Russian forces. Two molten, liquid heaps lying where forty million dollars of military hardware had just been. The rest of the column would not enjoy a much better fate.

  Toranssen: ‘alphas five through eight, starboard flank. target anti-air units. alphas two through four with me, portside.’

  While alphas nine and ten turned the first tanks into a pyre, the remaining eight jets, Jack’s included, banked hard, slowed, and fanned out, forming two lines on either side of the six-mile column, firing into it without falter or mercy. They focused on threat points first: anti-air units and tank-mounted heavy guns. They knew that they only had a few moments left before a concerted response could be expected.

  As they used their blitzkrieg to dismantle the Russian force’s forward fighting strength, Jack checked in on the other wings.

  Toranssen: ‘¿quavoce, john, how goes it?’

  He could see their squadrons as he thought of them, Minnie feeding his mind with the data he desired.