by J. F. Holmes
The most likely exit to be unguarded was the fusion reactor cooling water export. The pipe ran through a tunnel for a mile underground to cool it before being discharged back into the river, to avoid detection. Alongside it ran a service access tunnel, and he could see through his implant that there were no personnel anywhere near it. It had probably been ten years or more since the tunnel access was opened to the outside.
Opening the door, he saw no one in the corridor, and he slipped out towards the stairs at the opposite end from the elevator. He figured that he had maybe eight hours head start, plenty of time to get off the facility.
The first bump in his plans came as he descended the stairway, flight after flight. On the ninth landing, he almost collided with a Sergeant coming up the stairs. The young woman gaped at him for a second, star struck, and it allowed him a split second to think.
“Um, excuse me, Sergeant. Where is the Officers’ Mess?” he asked.
“Two more floors down, Sir,” she answered, recognizing him despite his civvies, standing at rigid attention, eyes locked forward. One good thing, he had noted, was that the surviving CEF enforced rigid discipline. Another good thing was the way her chest stood out while at attention … Snap out of it, he yelled at himself.
“Thank you, Sergeant,” he answered, and walked on past her.
The rest was easy. After the initial fighting, Warren had spent months travelling across the devastated land, hiding by day and moving at night, with the goal of getting back to his sister and her family. Slipping through the machinery of the fusion plant and finding the access door was relatively simple, and his interface with base net opened the locked door easily.
Walking down the mile-long corridor, he thought about how it would look, but there was no helping it. This had to be done, the letters formed on the wall by the drones left him no choice. If there were any chance that Red Dawn was to succeed, he had to do it, and what he hoped might be possible seemed like an even slimmer chance.
The exit had a simple mirror arrangement, allowing the person on the inside to see if there was any threat outside. The entrance was camouflaged to look like part of the rock wall of a secondary road cut, and blended in perfectly.
Seeing nothing after waiting for more than half an hour, he said to himself, “Goodbye, Kira,” and worked the locking mechanism, stepping out into the morning sunlight. Outside, it was a warm August day. He made his way through the pine forests, climbing steadily upwards towards the summit of a ridge, always aiming in a westward direction.
Sergeant Sasha Zivcovic watched him through the scope of his sniper rifle, ignoring the pain of his still healing wounds. “Should I take the cowardly son of a bitch out now?” he asked Doc Hamilton. His finger rested lightly on the trigger, but the Senior NCO knew that Ziv wouldn’t fire on THIS target without his say so.
“Nope, you know Nick’s orders. Follow him, and see what he’s up to. I don’t think he’s running away from something, I think he’s running toward something. Boyd, get your ass back to the Raven Rock exterior guards, send word for the rest of the team.”
The younger man said nothing, just nodded and took off running eastward, towards the nearest hidden guard post.
Chapter 32
Western Kansas, six weeks later.
The town looked deserted, but David Warren knew that could very easily be a lie. He had almost gotten into a bad jam east of the Mississippi twice, looking for food. The horse he rode was a valuable commodity, and there was still a healing gunshot score on its flank
Getting across the rivers had been hard, and he had only managed to cross the Mississippi by paying a boatman with five precious 10mm cartridges. Only four we left; the rest had been expended in a brutal gunfight north of St. Louis that left him shaking, and two men dead. There had been one CEF cache along his route, in Western Missouri, but when he got there, there was nothing left but broken boxes and MRE wrappers. Since then, he had been riding hard across the Kansas plains, occasionally swapping out horses with known sympathizers along the way. The last of those had been two hundred miles ago, though, and both he and the horse were worn out. His water was about gone, too.
Ahead lay the Kansas/Colorado border, and there was a barricade thrown up across the road, a battered school bus. Around them stretched hundreds of miles of empty plain, gently rising, and what was left of the ruined town, a mile behind the barrier. Food was running low; not for the horse, but for him, and he would hate to have to shoot the animal just to eat it. They could go far around, swing south twenty miles, and avoid it, but he needed supplies. If the town were empty, he could probably scavenge something. If it wasn’t, well, there was the bow on his back and the two remaining pistol rounds. Either fight or trade. He didn’t like the look of things, though. Scattered here and there in the grass were jumbles of bleached bones.
The decision was made for him when two horsemen rode out from around the bus. They carried stubby MP-5s, and rode easily, clad in bits of old CEF uniforms. Both had long beards, but looked fairly well fed. There was probably at least one more behind the bus; no one wanted to violate the rule of three and get nailed by an orbital. Out here you could risk it, as the nearest Invy town was a hundred miles south, but smart people didn’t.
“Sergeant,” said Warren, as the men road up, meaning the older of the two. The stripes of his rank were still loosely attached to the tattered uniform collar.
“Traveler,” answered the man in acknowledgement, but there was no politeness in his tone. “Let’s see what you’ve got, starting with that pistol. Take it out, real slow, left hand, butt first.”
Warren cursed inwardly. To have made it this far… some tactical genius he was. The isolation of the plains and the friendly reception at the last homestead had made him drop his guard. Better to give them what they wanted, and try to talk his way out of it.
“Think maybe you guys have some food? I’ve got some Invy credits.”
“Ain’t no Dragon shit good round here, with the CEF in charge,” said the other one, a sallow faced teenager. His only concession to military rank was a patrol cap squashed down on his head, but the submachinegun was well maintained and pointed directly at Warren’s chest.
Fifteen hundred meters away, Reynolds and Zivcovic lay underneath the grass colored blanket that they had thrown over themselves to prevent being silhouetted on the small hill. The redhead watched the bus with her spotter scope, looking for the potential third person. Behind them and slightly lower, Singh flashed a mirror southwards, signaling to the flanking team of Hamilton and Boyd. The northern flankers, Agostine and O’Neill, would get the same signal, if she could get the sun to angle correctly.
“There he is,” said Reynolds. “Caught a flash off his scope. Farther back than I expected, corner of the leftmost building, that charging station. Behind the wrecked tow truck.”
“That is … almost two thousand meters,” said her partner as he eyed the wind patterns in the tall grass.
“Can you make it?” she asked as he repositioned his rifle to find the target. He just spit on the ground in answer, nestling his Sako TRG-42 closer into his shoulder. Arrogant prick, she thought. See if he gets any from me tonight.
They waited to see what would happen, since their orders were to fire only if it looked like Warren was in serious trouble. Only twice before, once when he had been in that fight north of St, Louis, had the team acted. In that case, an unseen third man who had tried to stab the General in the back caught a round in the head, and fell back into the kinetic crater that the three attackers had come from.
The second time had been when, after they established the direction he was heading in, the lead team had come across two cannibals, roasting the leg of a child in the ruins of a medium sized town. That fight had been short and brutal, Hamilton and Boyd showing no pity for them.
They had been lucky, too, in that Invy patrols had taken their usual summer hiatus. The Wolverines hated moving around when the temperature was over ninety, and the C
EF took full advantage of that. Still, being out in the middle of nowhere helped, too. No drones, just the orbitals watching, as always.
Now, as Singh slid under the blanket with them, the Colonel debated what to do. Warren was heading somewhere, and she thought she had an idea where, but for what? Every time she had considered catching up with him, something had made her hold the team back.
Before she could open her mouth, there were a series of pops, pistol fire, one shot, two quick, a ragged burst of submachine gun fire, and then one more. She felt more than heard Ziv fire just after the first pop, then again before the fourth one. She whipped her binos out and focused in on Warren, who was still on his horse, but slumped down. One horse was down, and a third shot from Ziv hurtled its rider back as he tried to struggle out from under. The other horse ran, riderless, towards the west.
“Shit!” exclaimed Singh, and started to scramble out from under the blanket. “COVER ME!” she yelled, and vaulted onto her horse, whipping it into a gallop. She felt another round from the sniper crack past her, even as three more horsemen appeared from around a building. Rifle fire cracked from the small town, kicking up dust around her. What the hell had they stumbled into?
She cursed herself for not contacting Warren earlier, and dodged her horse to one side to give Ziv a clear shot, drawing her own pistol and riding straight at the riders, down to two now. When she was twenty meters from Warren, she fired, no chance of hitting, but hoping to throw off their aim.
A thud against her chest, and she grunted as the closer one let off a wild burst from his machine pistol, blood splattering from her horse’s head and another round slamming into her body armor, even as one of her wild rounds caught the shooter in the side of his face. Horse and rider fell in a tumble, and Singh rolled free. Scrambling for the pistol, she grabbed it and started firing in the general direction of her attackers. Warren lay ten meters from her, holding his own shoulder and crawling toward one of the dead men. The last man was reloading on the gallop, swapping magazines, when his head erupted and he tumbled backwards out of the saddle, a hundred meters away.
Singh ran over to Warren and dragged him behind the dead horse, and quickly started checking his wounds. A 9mm submachine round had plowed through the meat of his shoulder, and it was a mess. He screamed in pain as she put her gloved hand on it, squeezing it shut as she frantically tore open a pressure bandage with her teeth. With her free hand, she slapped it on the wound, and then placed his own hand over it.
“Hold this in place,” she grunted as she wound the cloth strips tight around the bandage. Then she risked a glimpse over the top of the horse.
There were three dead men, no, four. One was still alive, a woman, gut shot and making feeble crawling motions in the direction of the wrecked bus. Singh retrieved one of the MP-5s, checked the chamber, and fired a shot into the woman’s skull. She flopped once and then lay still. The rifle fire had dwindled off to a few lingering shots, and then stopped all together. They weren’t going to waste ammo when they were hopelessly outclassed; probably withdrawing even now.
“About time you showed yourself,” hissed Warren through his pain. “I, I, k,knew you were back there ever since I got t,t,to Kansas,” he stuttered. “Just didn’t know w,w,who…”
Singh laughed, adrenalin still coursing through her, joyous at their survival, though her ribs hurt. “We must be losing our touch!”
Chapter 33
It was night before they could move away from the dead horses. Warren’s bleeding had stopped, and she had injected nanos into the wound. He was higher than a kite, and moved along complacently.
They met Reynolds and Zivcovic halfway back to the small hill, and the other two scouts quickly erected an IR proof tent over them, while staying outside on guard. An hour later, Sergeant O’Neill crawled into the tent and kicked Singh out after getting an update on Warren’s condition.
“He’s comfortable now, and Doc Hamilton will take that bullet out when he gets here. With all due respect, Colonel, let me do my work,” she said, then ignored the older woman.
Singh crawled outside and waited for her night vision to slowly adjust, watching the Invy orbital soar through the clear summer sky. The moon, a sliver hanging in the eastern sky, showed lights in its shadowed part. They had been growing over the last five years, and she wondered what the Invy were doing up there. Occasionally a fusion drive flared brightly, a ship making a course adjustment, and she cursed the aliens that had denied her people a place in the stars.
“Makes you wonder how we’re going to beat them, doesn’t it?” asked Master Sergeant Agostine.
She didn’t answer for a moment, then said, “I’m going to get on my horse and ride into battle like I did today, and kick their asses.”
He laughed and said, “I’m not even sure a Dragon HAS an ass!”
“Nick, why the hell am I out here chasing numb-nuts around?” There was a note of weariness in her voice. “I should be back at Raven Rock, overseeing final preparations for the attack.”
“Dalpe’s got it under control, and you gave the orders to the scouts already. Besides, if he doesn’t get to where he’s going soon, we’re not going to make it back in time ourselves.”
A runner had been sent to the coast, to speak with a dolphin, who in turned relayed a message to one of the Russian ballistic submarines waiting in the Atlantic. They were to hold station outside Galveston, and be ready to move the scouts back to the Chesapeake Bay area. It would cut weeks off their travel time.
They were both quiet for a moment, then Agostine asked, “So where do you think he’s going?”
“Maybe back to Colorado to get his medical records and file a claim with the VA.”
“Yeah, that’s a battle I wouldn’t want to fight. Seriously, though.”
“I think he’s headed back to Cheyenne Mountain. There’s something there that Warren needs, though last time I saw it, it wasn’t really a mountain anymore. Just a really deep hole in the ground. It was one of the few places the Invy landed on their initial assault, sent in a whole regiment of Wolverines to clear the place out.”
Though she couldn’t see it, she knew that the veteran soldier was thinking about it. She had all their personnel records, and knew that he had been at the fight to protect the CEF Space Command Headquarters.
“How’s the leg?” she asked him.
“Riding a horse is easier than walking across the entire damn country.”
“Amen to that, brother!” said a burly figure in the starlight. “I got the report on the laser, but we were hauling ass as soon as I heard the gunfire. How is he?”
“Took a 9mm from a submachine gun at close range, and the bullet is still in his shoulder, just under the skin. Probably shitty reloaded ammo,” answered Singh, “and maybe glanced off the bone. Brit is in there now with him, and I gave him some nanos immediately. That was two hours ago.”
“OK, I’ll get to work. Infection’s what we have to worry about.” The medic disappeared into the tent, and the two of them walked further away to continue the conversation.
“Nick, do you think we can pull this off? Think someday you’ll be able to have your farm, and make a bunch of rug rats with Ms. O’Neill?”
“I. AM. NOT. INVOLVED. WITH. SERGEANT. O’NEILL!”
Singh grinned in the darkness at the NCO’s tone. She liked to tease him when she could, it kept him humble.
“ANYWAY …” he continued, “Honestly, Rachel, I don’t know. What I am concerned about is our infiltration on the DC spaceport. Six of us, to get a couple of pilots onto a base, cover them while they take off to go pick up assault troops, and then exfiltration? It’s going to be suicide.”
“One shuttle, one pilot. The others are going to be taken care of by Major Ikeda and his team in Japan, and Captain MacGregor in Scotland. Gives us a shorter intercept time.”
“Well, now I feel much better!” he answered sarcastically. “If we were going after three in one place, the element of surprise would help,
but if there is ANY missed timing on three sides of the world, the Invy will be onto it in an instant.”
“General Arkady said it was an acceptable risk, not putting all our eggs in one basket, and I agree with her.”
“Well, it’s our asses, not hers.”
“That’s not fair, Nick,” she said, her voice hard. “You know the price she paid.”
“Her life. Hopefully not mine. Or Brits. Or anyone else on the team.”
She sighed with exasperation. “What’s really bugging you, Sergeant?”
He waited, then said, “Officially, or unofficially?”
“If you have a valid critique of the plan, then say it. I trust your experience.”
“Well, since you asked, officially it’s the best plan we can come up with, given METT-T.”
“Mission, Enemy, Terrain, Troops, and Time,” she said, almost chanting it. “Yes, I think it is, but unofficially?”
Agostine had a good relationship with his commander, much more like partners than leader/subordinate, but he was uncomfortable complaining. Still, he’d opened his mouth, so out with it.
“Unofficially, for the last nine years, after we came out of hiding in the bases, every mission you’ve given us has been a ‘go do this’ and you never told me how to do it. Now I have boy wonder there telling me the exact timing to infiltrate an enemy base. I’m waiting for him to tell me exactly how we should do it.”
“Nick, what do you know about Operation Brightstar?” she asked.
Chapter 34
“Not much. I’m not cleared for it,” he answered honestly. “It had something to do with taking really smart kids and training them to be the best tactical and strategic planners we could produce. Sounds like a bunch of bullshit to me.”
“Well, that was the cover story. What they really did was meld their brains with computer processors. They called it ‘the Implant’. It allowed them to have instant access to terabytes of information, communicate directly with the AIs, and think about three times faster than the average human.”