REV- Renegades

by T. R. Harris

  “There’s not a lot of time and we need eyes on the ground,” Donovan announced when the bombardment timetable was revealed. “We might be able to organize an effective surgical strike, but without precise intel, we’d be taking an awful chance.”

  “Are you volunteering, gunny?” Captain Drake asked.

  “Yes sir. And I thought I’d take my good buddy, Gunnery Sergeant Johnson, along with me,” he said in his best Texas drawl. “I need someone to carry my water.”

  “The two of you are pretty unique assets to the REV program,” Drake said. “It would be a shame if you got yourselves captured or killed before the main attack.”

  Donovan smiled. “It would take a lot to do either, sir. And if we can’t get this operation launched before the guns start booming and the riots start, then an artillery shell landing on our heads will kill us just as dead as everyone else. No time to waste.”

  Kyle snickered. “And just the idea of sneaking into a nest of deadly aliens is getting my juices flowing. I feel stronger already.”

  Monroe looked at his watch. “We’ll send you out through one of the western gates. There’s a series of dry riverbeds on that side that should give you some cover. It will be dark in three hours. Get ready…you go in four.”

  35

  The idea of sneaking up on the enemy was the antithesis of normal REV operations; even so, Kyle and Donovan were anxious to get started. They dressed in black and gray camo and painted their faces with grease. They were each given suppressed M-101 rifles with night vision scopes. They also carried black-bladed K-BAR combat knives in case any silent kills became necessary.

  Each man carried datapads with local maps programmed in, plus small video cameras and throat mics. The Lanic had disabled all the orbiting Human satellites and destroyed their local broadcasting antennas a few weeks back, leaving Unity cut off from outside communications. But they still had shortwave radio. The REVs would light up the guns and instantly relay the data back to the command center. Triangulation would pinpoint the weapons, while on-site observation would give them an idea of the number of troops they were facing and the approach defenses.

  The temperature dropped considerably with the coming of night, a cloudless sky allowing the warmth of day to quickly dissipate into the atmosphere. The REVs didn’t need any additional covering. Their elevated body temperature would keep them warm.

  The military secured the area around the gate, having to shoo away some of the squatters so the area could be blacked out. Then the door was cracked open for a second and the REVs slipped outside.

  Native settlements crowded the walls of the city, but not on this side of the enclave. The southern hills wrapped around at this point before devolving into small undulations in the brush-covered landscape. No farming or other development had come to this side of the camp, preferring the more-open ground to the east and north. There was plenty of open space without having to make it too hard on either the settlers or the natives.

  Seasonal riverbeds carved channels in the low hills, and Don and Kyle reached the first of these only a minute after leaving the safety of the enclave. They ran at REV speed—even semi-activated REV speed—which was impressive. They could see clearly in the murky darkness and jumped at the wadi’s edge, landing in soft sand twenty feet into the riverbed. Both men were as giddy as a pair of formerly pinned-up greyhounds now freed to stretch their legs. They turned south and sprinted along the riverbed, cascading even more from the exertion and the excitement.

  The first of the railgun emplacements was five miles from the gate and the REVs covered the distance in seventeen minutes. The riverbed crawled along the base of the two-thousand-foot-high mound. The men dug into the dirt on the south side of the channel and peered up at the lighted crest of the hill.

  As was common with alien military operations, no one considered a pre-emptive strike against the target. Neither the Antaere nor the Lanic had much experience with war, which confused the REVs. Did they expect the Humans to just sit idly back and let the enemy set up their guns? Apparently, they did.

  As noted, the hilltop was awash with light, with crews working around the clock to get the complicated railgun system in place and charged. The weapons were more technologically-advanced than a simple ballistic cannon. They ran on massive amounts of electricity required to produce the electromagnetic field that would propel the rounds, but once the system was up and running, they could launch a fifteen-hundred-pound multiple-warhead shell, traveling at seventy-eight hundred miles per hour, every forty-five seconds. The power of the gun was impressive, able to send its load over two hundred miles downrange. That wouldn’t be necessary in this case. The center of the enclave was only nineteen miles from the hilltops.

  And that was causing most of the problems with the set-up. The angle of attack was too shallow, requiring the support platforms to be buried in the ground on the downhill slope to overcome the minimum elevation settings on the weapons, otherwise the rounds would shoot over the Enclave. As Kyle and Donovan made their way up the hill, using discarded boulders for cover, their approach was shielded by the sound of earthmovers digging into the rocky soil, making room for the transport vehicles and various other support equipment each weapon required.

  There were other crews building roadways around the series of hills, and farther along the mounds terraces were being carved on the hillsides. In addition, ground was being cleared between the native communities along the south wall of the Enclave and the hills

  It was hard to tell how many native combat troops were posted to each weapon, not with the frenzy of construction crews contaminating the count. Even so, there didn’t seem be more than a few hundred on the hilltop. The REV’s placed a laser marker on the twenty-meter-long rail and relayed the information to the command hut back in the city. Then they moved to the next hill.

  It was two klicks away, down a steep decline and then up a more-gentle rise. There were no roads between the two hills—at least along this face—so the men had to blaze their own trail through the thick brush and prickly form of native cacti. Five minutes later, they had the next weapon painted.

  This unit was already in the ground, with the native crews joined by a dozen yellow-skinned Antaere, working on the electronics for the weapon. What was missing, however, were the power generators. LtCol. Monroe said they’d destroyed the electric supply units before the bulk of the Human military forces evacuated the planet. That was supposed to make the weapons useless. Yet if what he suspected was true, then the Antaere were helping the natives. Either huge power cables would be strung to the railguns, or energy would be beamed to them by microwave transmission. The REVs began looking for signs of either.

  There were unassembled transmission dishes on the ground behind the railgun, with a fifty-foot tower still being erected. The weapons would be powered remotely, meaning there would be no power lines to cut. The guns would get their energy through the air, making them harder to shut down.

  The REVs could see across to the next hilltop, where the transmission tower was already in place. They followed the direction of the receiving dishes farther south, looking for the source of the power.

  Crawling on their bellies just beyond the light of the worksite, Kyle and Don worked their way around to the backside of the emplacement. Here, they took out monoculars and scanned the landscape behind the hilltops.

  And that’s when they gasped.

  In the wide plain behind the hills sat row upon row of black armored personnel carriers—a quick count of the rows put the number at a hundred. And milling around the vehicles were literally thousands of armed Lanic, being lectured to and organized by Antaere military commanders. The APCs weren’t of Human design, but rather Qwin.

  Donovan slid behind a rock for cover and fingered his throat mic.

  “Eyes to base, come in base.”

  “This is base, go ahead,” said the voice of Lieutenant Colonel Monroe.

  “Looks like the guns are the least of our worries,
sir,” Don began. “The Qwin have amassed an army of around ten thousand Lanic with a hundred Antaere APCs to deliver them.”

  “Are you sure about the make of the APCs?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You probably already know those things are more than just personnel carriers; they’re also powerful tanks. The firepower of a hundred of them would be devastating, especially with the cover of the railguns.”

  “Sir, there may be a half-a-million Humans in the enclave, but the Antaere will be able to cut through them like butter. The kill rate could easily be a thousand to one. There’s about to be some serious rainfall on the enclave.”

  “I concur,” said Monroe. “Estimated time to launch?”

  “It doesn’t look like they’ll go until the guns are in place. Gun four is still being set in position. Three already is, and if they’re working in progression, then we must assume one and two are already set. We’re going there next. Another thing, the railguns are going to be energized with microwave transmissions.”

  “From the Antaere?”

  “Yes, sir, just as you thought.”

  “Have you identified the Antaere headquarters?”

  Donovan looked at Kyle, who pulled the monocular from his eye and nodded. Kyle fingered his mic.

  “Sir, it’s three klicks to the east of the APC staging area. They have three generators behind the command structure and a transmission tower. The camp has four main tents set off about half-a-klick from the generators. There aren’t a lot of Antaere first-liners around, but a hell of a lot of Lanic.”

  “The Antaere are only advising the attack, not participating in it. The camp probably has the Qwin general and his staff, plus a tac tent and a comm station.”

  There was a delay on the line as Monroe digested the information.

  “Okay, good job, men. Paint the other two guns and then get your asses back here. We have some additional planning to do—”

  Kyle saw the Lanic patrol before Donovan did. There were three of them, coming up the hillside, flashlights guiding their way. Kyle rolled to one side and unleashed his K-BAR knife, sending it twirling through the air with not only accuracy but REV-enhanced speed and power. The eight-inch-long blade penetrated the upper left shoulder of one of the natives…and then kept going from the force of the throw. The hilt sank into the soft flesh as well, and was the only thing keeping the knife from passing completely through the body.

  Donovan reacted with REV speed as well, rolling on his back with the barrel of the M-101 pointed down his belly and between his feet. The puff of the suppressed weapon was masked by the sounds of construction echoing across the valley between the hilltops. The round caught the second native in his mouth—which had open a moment before when he spotted the two camouflaged REVs. The back of his head exploded outward, spraying the third Lanic with his comrade’s blood and brain matter. Covered now by the body of his dead friend, the native guard turned and sprinted down the hillside, while grasping wildly for his communication device.

  Kyle was up a moment later and following the alien. The Lanic were light and quick, yet not compared to a REV—even a semi-activated REV. Kyle caught up to him three seconds later, placing a stiff elbow into the native’s back. The thin, brown-skinned creature lifted off his feet and flew forward, landing face first on the rocky soil and tumbling several times down the slope. By the time he came to a rest, Kyle was standing over him, ripping the comm device from the fabric of his torn and bloody uniform.

  Kyle smiled. “Sorry, dude,” he said to the wide-eyed alien through their embedded translation devices. “But your war is over.”

  A single punch to the face was enough to crush the native’s skull.

  Kyle Johnson stood up and took a deep, trembling breath, his body cascading higher, creating a feeling of euphoria in the REV. “Now that really got the juices flowing.”

  After reporting the engagement to LtCol. Monroe, Donovan collected his jacked-up partner and the pair buried the bodies in dirt and rock before moving to the next hills. The guards would be reported missing—they may even be found—but that couldn’t be helped. The REVs marked the last two railguns and then hurried back to the enclave. The reconnaissance mission had taken three hours ten minutes.

  36

  The next day, the command tent was packed with officers and enlisted, mobilizing for the coming action. Although the plan hadn’t been finalized, they all knew it would involve hundreds of combat troops, and each of them had to be issued gear, weapons and ammo, and then staged at locations throughout the enclave that wouldn’t alert the myriad of enemy spies operating within the city. With the porous nature of the settlement—as well as the integration of natives with Humans—the task was impossible to pull off unnoticed.

  To counter this, LtCol. Monroe consulted with the civilian authorities and asked them to muster thousands of Humans near the east and north gates, making it appear as though they were preparing to mount a staunch defense of the compound. In the meantime, the REVs and military assault troops would leave by the western gates. It was decided that any mission would take place that night. To wait any longer would give the Antaere time to finish setting up the last railgun and for the ten-thousand-strong Lanic division to move into position.

  “Railguns are big and sturdy pieces of equipment,” said Lieutenant Colonel Monroe. “Even if we hit them, it won’t change the angle of attack much, not when the damn things are pointing right down into the heart of the enclave.” There were four other senior officers with him: another lieutenant colonel and two majors, plus the three REVs. Navy Captain Donnie Pearson—an O-6—was also in the room, but only to observe. If this operation had involved starships and space-borne tactics, he would be more involved. Instead, he sat back and watched.

  “There are multiple objectives, sir,” Donovan Ross was saying. “The guns are important, but they can’t be used to defend against our counterattack, not with the barrel angle. What I’m worried about are the hundred tanks and ten thousand troops.”

  Donovan could tell Monroe didn’t know how to handle him and the other REVs. The officer didn’t want to insult them by pointing out that they had no formal training in military tactics and planning, but he’d already made his feelings clear through other comments or suggestions ignored. To him, the REVs were merely wind-up toys for the Marines. Extremely deadly wind-up toys, but still a single-purpose weapon.

  “The Antaere have to know any direct attack on Unity, even with a hundred tanks, would be futile, not unless they can soften us up with the railguns,” Monroe said. “Sure, they’ll kill a lot of us, but the Humans here are not without the means to defend themselves. Although weapons were banned in the early days of the enclave, over the years, thousands were smuggled in, to the point that the laws stopped being enforced. We estimate there’s a weapon—either rifle, handgun or energy device—for every person in Unity. Like I said, there will be horrendous casualties on both sides, but we will prevail.”

  “Are you saying we ignore the army and the APCs, sir?”

  “The only way the natives can defeat the enclave is if our numbers are cut down by bombardment from the guns. If they can keep them firing, they may even manage to scatter the population beyond the walls, making them easy to pick off in smaller groups. The guns have to be our priority.”

  Captain Pearson had been studying the topography map tacked to the tent wall.

  “Excuse me, colonel, but why have the Lanic placed the guns on the hilltops in the first place? he asked. “If I’m not mistaken, those weapons have a range of around two hundred miles and are designed to be fired from a horizontal position. The Lanic could have placed them fifty miles away, completely out of our reach, and then sat back and pulverize the compound. Instead, they’ve placed them on hillsides only twelve klicks from the south wall, easily within reach of either our counterattack or a mob of desperate civilians.” He stood up and went to the map, running a finger along the base of the hills. “And now they’re clearing out
this space between the native settlements and the hills. Why?”

  “To make room for their tanks,” someone in the tent remarked.

  “Exactly,” said Pearson. “They’re going to place ten thousand Lanic soldiers between us and the hills to prevent us from reaching the guns.”

  Donovan Ross stepped next to the Navy captain. “They’re also placing the native encampment between us and the guns. The only way we can advance on the hills is to go through the native towns. In the heat of battle, won’t a lot of innocent Lanic get killed?”

  Monroe studied the map for a moment as the tent remained silent. When he spoke, his voice was grim.

  “I think I see the Antaere strategy now.” He sighed deeply. “They want us to attack, fired up by the bombardment from the railguns, and with half-a-million panicking Humans charging the hill. As I said before, we will prevail, but only after we’ve killed a couple of thousand Lanic civilians, plus another ten thousand troops guarding the hill.”

  “The Antaere have to know we have the manpower to take the hills and destroy the guns and the tanks,” said Marine Captain Drake, the REV officer. “You would think the Lanic would know that, too.”

  Monroe smiled, not from humor, but from a sick revelation. “Here’s what’s happening, gentlemen…at least in my opinion. We’re fucked no matter what we do. The Antaere aren’t looking for a victory here, but rather a defeat. They want us to overrun the native settlements and the Lanic military positions. The more natives we kill, the better it will look in the headlines, and the more protests they can foment. The Lanic have always been reluctant followers of the Antaere. A massacre like this will sway a lot of minds.”

  “But it will be in self-defense,” an Army major remarked.

  Monroe continued with his sick grin. “Jack, we’re pretty far behind enemy lines and with a complete communications blackout of the enclave. Any news that gets out will be from the Antaere point of view and tell the story they want to tell.”