The Collective had launched Scimitar as a way to flush out European Union separatists, a tough band of rebels that used the area as a home base to launch attacks against the new government. Shielded by the local populace—and a minefield of radioactive fallout—the rebels assumed that Chernobyl was the last place their enemies would mount an offensive. That gamble turned out to be a colossal mistake. Official history maintained that the rebels had sabotaged the plant themselves, blowing the lid off the number four reactor in an act of mass suicide. Darker rumors suggested that the Collective was actually responsible—specifically, that they had targeted the plant to wipe out the resistance in a single, deadly stroke. To this day, nobody knew the full truth, or how many had died. The region had been uninhabitable ever since.
“A sarcophagus of steel and concrete encases the damaged reactor,” Lea continued. “The decaying core is nominally contained inside, but over time the materials have become brittle and unstable. That’s why our mission profile calls for a remote insertion.” Pallas highlighted a section of road about twenty klicks inside the dead zone. “That’s our spot, right there. The distance minimizes the risk of disturbing the ruins and attracting attention, but it’s close enough for us to roll the rest of the way in our APC.”
“A personnel carrier on an empty road makes a juicy target,” Tiernan said. “What about a more stealth approach through the woods?”
Lea shook her head. “Too dangerous in the countryside. All those trees soak up radiation like a sponge. More than one hour in there and you’ll get cooked, even with protective gear. The road is the only safe way in or out.”
Tiernan sighed. “Well, at least we won’t have to worry about electronic surveillance,” he observed. “If background rads are too much for our sensors, the Inru won’t be able to use them either.”
“Which means we can get them before they even know we’re there.” Lea then directed Pallas to focus on one of the taller buildings in town, which stood a few blocks away from the power plant. “This is where we believe the Inru are holed up. It’s an old apartment complex, full of places to hide. Blueprints show the place has a basement, which is the most logical place for them to go. There’s cover from thermal satellite sweeps, plus enough shielding to protect them from the radiation.”
“A real hardcore party,” the lieutenant said, impressed. “So what’s the protocol?”
Lea handed the briefing over to Novak. “I’ve prepared your body armor with dual layers of specially resistant polyalloys,” the GME said crisply. “This should offer you limited protection from background radiation, increasing your safe-exposure times. Particle density in most areas is low enough for you to breathe without filters—though I wouldn’t recommend a leisurely stroll through town. Keep your activities limited to what’s absolutely necessary, then get out as quickly as possible.”
The members of the advance team swore under their breath. They bitched about every mission—it was what soldiers were supposed to do—but in this case Lea understood perfectly. Even though she could never express it in front of the others, she felt the same way about this place. Chernobyl didn’t want them there. The city didn’t want anybody there.
“What kind of levels are we talking about?” Gunny asked.
“Anywhere from twenty to two thousand roentgens, depending on where you are,” Novak noted dryly. “Which is why it’s advisable to watch your step. Should you chance to walk into a robust dose, I’m afraid there won’t be much I can do for you.”
“The most toxic zones are mapped out on the integrators I programmed for this mission,” Lea said, as those areas appeared in red on the display. “Your combat visors are also equipped with radiation detectors, so you’ll know your levels every step of the way. The primary danger, of course, is from the damaged reactor—but there’s also the park adjacent to the plant, and the town cemetery. The old graphite core is buried there, so don’t set foot inside under any circumstances.”
“Not unless you want to glow in the dark,” Pallas added.
Novak leveled an icy stare at him. A green line, meanwhile, twisted between the red zones, following a convoluted path through town that terminated at the apartment building.
“This corridor provides the least exposure,” Lea said, “so that’s our path.”
Tiernan examined the approach and frowned doubtfully. “There’s a lot of kill zones along the way, Major,” he warned, pointing to a number of tight squeezes between structures—perfect places to get boxed in with no way out. “We get caught in there, our backs are against the wall.” He looked up at Lea, searching her for clues. “What kind of contingency do we have?”
“None,” Lea said evenly. “We just fight—even if we have to pull the town out from underneath them.”
Her reply shocked Tiernan into silence. Lea knew she would hear more from him later—but for now she kept on going. “We’re talking about an opportunity to end this thing, tonight. That’s why I need this to go by the numbers, people. We do this right, the Inru won’t get a second chance. Everybody understand?”
The advance team nodded in agreement. Lea knew they prized the hunt as much as she did, in spite of the dangers—especially when the big game was at stake. They could smell Inru blood, which was just what Lea wanted.
“Stations,” she ordered.
The team disbanded to their landing positions, while Pallas left the display to assume control of the tactical interface. At the same time, Novak rounded the table and fixed Lea with a hard stare.
“Fifty roentgens,” the GME said in no uncertain terms. “That’s your limit. More than that and you’ll retreat, promise me.”
“Don’t worry,” Lea assured her with a weak smile. “I know what I’m doing.”
“I’m sure you do, my dear. They all do—particularly the ones who don’t come back.”
With that parting shot, Novak left her alone with Tiernan. He hung back for a time while Lea busied herself with the display of the town, assessing its risks with the same cool detachment that had served her so well as a hammerjack. Lea missed the unbridled certainty of that world, where her victims had been merely virtual, the manifestation of some soulless corporate entity. Flesh and blood, as she had discovered, was totally different.
Absently, she checked her armor compartments one last time, running down her list of weapons and supplies. She paused for a moment over her medikit, counting out the ampoules of antirad elixirs and stims—including the speedtec doses she had requisitioned for just this mission. The amber liquid glinted at Lea, with the fascination of a deadly poison.
“You’re loaded for bear,” Tiernan observed, in the worn tones of someone who knew her better than she would have liked. “You think she’ll be there tonight, don’t you?”
Lea closed the medikit and stowed it back in her armor. She hated justifying herself to him, but always felt a compulsion to do just that. Tiernan was, after all, her XO—but Lea knew that his position had little to do with how she felt.
“I’m not taking any chances,” she replied, turning back toward him. “She’s one of the few senior commanders the Inru has left, so it makes sense that she would be involved. Besides,” she added, “this operation has her fingerprints all over it.”
“You should know. You developed the Avalon profile.”
Avalon. Her shadow was so omnipresent, and still it sounded strange to hear the name spoken out loud. Lea, however, didn’t take the bait. Instead, she raised a curious eyebrow at her executive officer.
“You don’t need to tap-dance around me, Eric,” she said evenly. “If you have concerns about this mission, just tell me.”
“I’ve never been worried about the mission,” Tiernan reassured her. “You know this team would follow you anywhere, Lea—and that includes me.” He lowered his voice before continuing. “I just want to be clear about our objective. We’re about to drop into some seriously hazardous territory, and that means tough choices. I can’t make that call unless I know what’s im
portant—neutralizing the Inru, or putting Avalon’s head on a spike.”
“At this point, I’d say they were one and the same.”
“Maybe they are—but where your head is makes a big difference.” He leaned in close. “If it comes down to saving one of us or taking Avalon out, what’s it going to be? You better make that decision right now, because in the field you might not get the chance.”
Lea narrowed her eyes at him, but Tiernan didn’t flinch.
“I’m aware of that, Eric,” she answered quietly. “I’m also aware of my responsibilities.”
“I know you are,” Tiernan said. “If I had the slightest doubt about that, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. But I won’t allow a personal vendetta to jeopardize the safety of my team, Lea. If I see that happening, I will pull the plug.”
Lea forced down a swell of anger—but only because she didn’t want to create an incident in the middle of the CIC. “That isn’t your decision to make, Lieutenant,” she snapped. “If you have a problem with that, you can stay back here with the support crew.”
“I go where my people go.”
“They’re my people too, Eric.”
“I know that,” he said, softening a little. “I just don’t want to be in a situation where one of us gets between you and Avalon.”
“That won’t happen,” Lea told him without the least bit of irony, “if you stay out of my way.”
That ended the conversation—not on the note Lea wanted, but in a way that served her purposes. Then she turned back to her work, looking up only when she knew Tiernan was gone. It was cruel, but to do anything less would have risked opening the discussion even further, in directions she couldn’t go.
It’s for his own good, she told herself. He doesn’t want to know you that way.
What frightened her was the thought that he already did.
A full moon illuminated the night sky as the transport started its descent, the ungainly lines and jutting angles of its airframe traced in a panoply of vaporous light. Electronic countermeasures had, until then, obscured the signature of the bulky craft, protecting it from the various missile installations that dotted the countryside; but as it broke the heavy cloud cover over the Chernobyl dead zone, the pilot disengaged the ECMs and took refuge in the permanent layer of radiation that blanketed the wastelands with an invisible haze. By the time the forest loomed in the cockpit window, the leaden clouds had rendered the terrain almost completely dark, visible only as a green-and-black mosaic through the pilot’s infrared goggles.
Lea, meanwhile, monitored the approach from inside the armored personnel carrier. The vehicle was parked on the aft cargo ramp of the transport, which opened into the frigid air as they neared the landing area. She was seated up front with her driver and watched the unwelcoming landscape roll by on a dashboard monitor that carried a feed from the cockpit. As the wind howled outside her window, what struck her most was the utter lack of human activity. In a world where urban metroplexes covered half a continent, here not a single light burned.
“Talon, this is Wanderer,” she heard Pallas say over her earpiece, his message peppered by light static. “We’re about one minute out. You guys ready?”
Lea glanced over at her driver, who nodded affirmatively.
“We’re all set, Wanderer,” she reported. “Sounds like your signal is dropping out. What’s the story?”
“We’re picking up some interference from stray radiation. I was afraid of this, Skipper. Our coded channels operate in the same bands, so it’s only going to get worse the closer we get to the source. That could mean we’ll have problems monitoring the mission from here.”
“What about the lower bands?”
“Hold on.” After a moment, Pallas came back on. “Those are marginal for data, but good enough for voice. Of course, in this dead spectrum any open transmissions will stick out like a sore dick.”
“Then we’ll maintain radio silence as long as we can,” Lea said. “Do your best with the passive feed, but no active bursts unless it’s an emergency.”
“Affirmative, boss. Thirty seconds. Prepare to disengage.”
“Acknowledged. Talon out.” Lea rose from her seat and poked her head into the rear of the APC. “Looks like we’re going in dark, people. Hyperband is spotty, so we’ll be on uncoded channels. That means we stay close—use the comm gear only when necessary. We don’t want to alert the Inru to our presence before we’re ready to take them down.”
A round of comm checks crackled as the members of the team strapped their helmets on, their features lit by the pale red glow of their visors. Tiny columns of information appeared in the heads-up displays in front of their eyes, keyed to sensors placed throughout their body armor. Lea studied the readings carefully as she flipped her visor down, paying the closest attention to the radiation counter. It was ticking at thirty microroentgens per hour—and that was within the confines of the APC’s shielded plates. Already, the transport was starting to kick up plumes of radioactive particles.
“Twenty meters,” Lea heard Pallas say. She looked past the numbers on her visor to see Tiernan staring at her grimly from across the small compartment. So quickly that she almost thought she imagined it, he flashed her a cryptic wink before slipping his own helmet on.
What that implied, Lea could only guess.
She strapped herself back into the passenger seat, listening with the others as Pallas counted the distance until landing. She rubbed her gloved hands together, unable to wipe the sweat from her palms or slow the urging of her heart, both of which made her feel alive and restrained at the same time.
“Contact,” the hammerjack said.
There was a horrendous jolt when they touched down. The driver instantly threw the APC into gear, bouncing everyone around as the vehicle lurched down the landing ramp and into the open air. The hulking outline of the transport filled the narrow slats of the forward windows, but only for a moment; as soon as the APC rolled away, the transport lifted off again and was gone. When the roar of the turbines faded, all that was left was a cloud of settling dust.
And a lonely highway that stretched into forever.
“Move out,” Lea said.
Trees swayed in the dim afterglow of the headlights, assuming illusory life in a steady wind that blew from the northeast. The APC stayed at the center of the road, where radiation from the surrounding woods was the least potent, proceeding at a painfully slow speed. Lea kept her eyes glued to the mission feed, increasingly restless as the image faded in and out on the dashboard monitor. As the static grew heavier, the driver slowed even more, until the signal disappeared altogether and the APC ground to a halt.
“That’s it,” the driver said.
“How far out are we?” Lea asked.
“One klick, give or take. It’s impossible to be precise without that patch from the CIC.”
“What about backup GPS?”
The driver tapped his monitor, in the vain hope it would do some good.
“Dead and gone, Skipper. Nothing getting in or out.” He turned back to her. “We can keep going, if you want.”
Lea considered it briefly. The approach was risky enough with Pallas keeping precise track of their coordinates—but without that information, they were driving blind. Rumbling too close to town in the APC was an open invitation for Inru snipers to pick them off.
“Keep it here,” she said, climbing out of her seat. “We’ll go the rest of the way on foot.”
In back, the advance team was already on the move. All it took was a single nod from Lea, and Tiernan popped the hatch. A blast of frigid air flooded the compartment, raw and utterly clean, but with an ionized element that everybody seemed to notice. It was their first taste of Chernobyl, which settled quickly at the back of Lea’s throat.
“Go,” she ordered.
Seconds later, the entire team had boots on the ground. Lea was the last person out, but jogged past the others to join Tiernan at the head of the column. They ex
changed a brief glance, then looked back at the troops—a collection of otherworldly figures, at one with the primordial dark. Their breaths fogged the air in eager anticipation.
The team moved as a single entity, pulse rifles constantly sweeping the edges of the road as a defense against some Inru surprise. Tiernan kept a lookout for heat signatures in the icy forest, while Lea closely watched for radiation. Her sensors held at forty microroentgens, with occasional variations depending on the wind. As the team neared the top of a small hill, a sudden jump in the readings caused her to halt.
Everyone immediately crouched into defensive positions. Lea and Tiernan went a few steps farther, stopping at the highest point. The lieutenant leaned in close to her, keeping his gaze leveled at the area out in front of them. Lea did the same, holding her breath until her dosimeter leveled off again.
“Almost a hundred microroentgens,” she said.
“Yeah,” the lieutenant agreed. “Welcome home.”
Down below, shimmering in the ethereal glow of the infrared, lay the ghost town of Chernobyl. Heat still emanated from the entombed reactors, casting a dirty light that coursed through the streets and wrapped itself around the adjacent structures—poisonous wisps invisible to the naked eye. Matted in white silhouette, the façades of old apartment buildings reached defiantly into the night sky, but only as sagging shadows of their former selves. The souls who had once called this place home were ancient memories now, though the traces of their lives froze the city forever in time. Disaster had immortalized Chernobyl, and inoculated it against the progress that changed the rest of the planet.
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