Drone Wars 1: Day of the Drone (8 page)

“Colonel, over here!”

Through the dusty haze of the tunnel, Xander could make out the first contingent of Marines guarding the entrance to the critical communications equipment for the Center. As the pair ran up to the line of heavily armed men, Captain Steve Harkness took a quick look at the blood on Simms’ head.

“Medic!” he called out.

“I’m all right. Are your men in position?”

“Yes, sir. We’ve locked down the upper access points. The only way in should be through here.”

“Good,” Simms said, as a Navy corpsman placed a compress on the side of his face and wrapped a gauze bandage around his head to keep it in place. “Can you spare any w—”

The heat and concussion from the blast was incredible, and threw Xander and Simms—along with the entire Marine contingent—out into the connecting tunnel. Smoke filled the passageway and visibility dropped to zero.

“What the hell was that?” Xander yelled out between coughs.

A voice in the gloom answered him. “One hell of a powerful explosion, I would say.”

Xander could feel a stiff breeze passing through the tunnel running from the Admin building through to Communications. The access way above had been breached and air now flowed freely between the two buildings. The tunnel cleared of smoke and dust almost instantly.

“They’re coming in from above!” a Marine sergeant reported.

Once the haze had cleared, Xander assessed the damage caused by the huge explosion. His friend Jamie Simms was pressed up against the far wall of the access tunnel, his eyes open, yet his head bent at an odd angle. Xander rushed to his side and pulled the body away from the wall. His neck was broken. He was dead.

Xander went pale. In all his years of drone combat, this was the first time he’d seen a corpse in person—and it was one of his closest friends. All the sounds of battle around him faded away as he held the inert body of Jamie Simms in his arms, until a pair of strong hands took him by his arms and lifted him up. Two bloodied Marines were dragging him down the tunnel beyond the Communications building and further on toward Research and Development.

As he regained his senses, Xander was able to better navigate the passageway himself. He looked around at the scant number of Marines around him. “Where’s the captain?” he asked.

“He didn’t make it. It looks like those drones came equipped with a bunker buster to get into the Communications building. Took out most of our force with the blast. Our position became indefensible, so we’re falling back.”

Xander Moore had been around drones since he was eight, yet when he detected the telltale sound of angry bees coming up from behind, it struck terror in his gut. Drones were in the tunnel, and they were capable of traveling much faster than the men could run.

They were now at the R&D building, with three wide access portals leading off to the left. The Marines slid into the first portal and fell into defensive postures. Xander was literally thrown into the wide vestibule.

“Take cover!” one of the Marines yelled back at him.

Xander looked around. There was a series of utilitarian couches lining the room, and a circular reception desk where Audrey White and her reliefs would normally have been sitting. Now the granite desktop was covered with broken debris that had rained down from the ceiling.

Xander ran for the protection of the huge, permanent reception desk. He jumped and slid on the smooth stone surface until he fell off the other side.

He had been expecting to hit the hard ceramic tile floor behind the desk; instead he landed on something that was soft—and cursing.

Chapter 7

“What the hell!” a female voice cried out.

Xander was now face-down in the fabric of a blue pantsuit, and even without looking he knew from the scent of the perfume that he had landed on the Fox News reporter Tiffany Collins.

He rolled off the woman. Their shocked expressions mirrored one another. “What the hell are you doing here?” Xander asked.

The woman brushed white dust off her ripped and bloodied outfit. “Oh, except for a couple of cracked ribs, I’m fine. Thanks for asking,” she said.

Xander leaned back against the back wall behind the desk. “I wasn’t expecting to land on someone. So sue me.”

The swoosh of the missile came a split second later. Reacting instantly, Xander dove for the reporter and pressed her flat against the floor. She yelped, but was instantly overcome by the explosion that struck the stone edifice directly above them. A shower of debris fell down, including baseball-size pieces of granite. They were nearly buried in the aftermath of the explosion, which was soon followed by three more, just not in such close proximity to their hiding place.

Through the din of battle, Xander could hear the frantic bursts of automatic gunfire, along with the grunts and screams of Marines being cut to shreds by missiles and gunfire. The air filled with the gut-wrenching sound of whirling propellers seeming to whiz by from all directions.

Then the scene grew quiet as the buzzing moved further down the corridor, broken occasionally by sporadic bursts of gunfire or the release of small, solid-propellant missiles, followed by rumbling explosions.

Xander attempted to move, shedding a pile of rubble from his back. That’s when he noticed he was face to face with Tiffany Collins. Gone was the even complexion and perfect hair. The woman was now caked in white dust and her hair was a mass of mangled yellow, infused with a variety of objects which defied identification.

“I think they’ve moved on,” she whispered.

Xander blinked several times before comprehending her words. “Oh yeah, of course.” He pulled away, and more debris fell from his back.

Tiffany sat up and fluffed her hair, sending a cloud of dust into the air around her head, forming a halo effect. Xander had to smile at the vision.

“So we meet again,” he said. And then without waiting for comment, he continued, “What
are
you doing here? What happened to the sergeant?”

“Oh, him? He was taking me to some sort of safe room when the drones attacked. Next thing I knew, he’d pulled his gun and was running down the corridor yelling like a banshee, leaving me to fend for myself. After that everything started falling on me—literally—you included!”

“Thanks for breaking my fall. That could’ve hurt.”

“Don’t mention it. But what do we do now? Hopefully you’re not going to run off and leave me too.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

He stood up and looked over the reception desk. It was what he expected, a horrific scene of dead Marines and utter devastation where the access tunnel met the R&D building. Tiffany now stood next to him.

“What’s going on, Mister Smith … I mean Xander? There’s some major shit happening here.”

He nodded. “No argument there.”

“So who’s doing all this?”

“It could be one of a dozen organizations with a grudge against the RDC, or even a coalition of them. This took a lot of coordination, money and manpower.”

“What do they hope to gain, except bragging rights?” Tiffany asked. “Taking out one facility doesn’t kill the program.”

Xander looked at her with a smirk.

She noticed his expression. “You told me there were backups to the backups. Was that not true?”

“Unfortunately, we’re victims of our own success. But I believe that’s a conversation for later. If you listen carefully, you’ll notice the buzzing is growing louder.”

“They’re coming back!” Tiffany yelled.

“Probably prowling for survivors. And one other thing: these units have microphone pickups, so they can hear when you yell like that.”

“Screw you!”

“Perhaps another time, Ms. Collins, but right now we have to get out of the facility. By my estimation, these drones still have over an hour of flight time left.”

Tiffany gritted her teeth. “Fine, smartass, this is your neighborhood. How do we make our exit?”

Xander looked behind him at the main entrance to the R&D underground facilities. There had been a number of powerful explosions from deep within the subterranean labyrinth, yet he held out a glimmer of hope for a plan that was percolating in his mind.

“Follow me … and remain quiet. There may be some sentry units sitting idle just waiting for someone to wander by.”

********

Taking point, Xander led the pair out of the reception area and into the main part of the R&D building—what was left of it. The corridors here were wide and the ceilings high, designed to accommodate the fleet of golf cart-like vehicles that frequented the building, transporting huge UAVs and ground units from one section to the other. At the end of this particular corridor was the entrance to the testing labs where the prototypes were put through their paces. A battle had taken place here, too, with the damage mirroring that found throughout the rest of the facility.

There were bodies, too, which didn’t seem to faze Tiffany Collins. For Xander, that was a plus in her column.
Probably covered a number of wars and terrorist strikes during her tenure,
he thought. That would condition a person to the horrors mankind inflicted upon itself, much better than Xander’s first experience with death in the flesh.

Unfortunately, the research labs were much like the rest of the base, and Xander’s spirits sank when he saw several of the larger prototypes twisted in shambles throughout the room. He moved to a large steel door set to one side of the testing area. There was evidence of an explosion near the door; the control panel now dangled from the wall, held only by a few orphan wires.

“Dammit!” he said. “This is just great.”

“What’s inside?” Tiffany asked.

“This is where they keep all the really neat gizmos. There used to be an advanced hoverbike inside, along with some of the deadlier drones. Even if my access card worked, the controls are shot to shit.” He turned to survey what was left in the large testing area. “There’s nothing out here I can use. We’re going to have to hoof it. It’s only a mile to the other side of the access tunnel.”

“Or you could help me open the door. This thing is made of six-inch thick steel, and it weighs a ton.”

Confused, Xander turned back to the reporter. She was standing at the left side of the heavy vault door, where he could clearly see now that it was open slightly.

“So much for high-tech locking mechanisms,” Tiffany remarked with a smile.

“Let’s hope the drones didn’t get inside first.”

The pair struggled against the heavy weight of the door until it began to open more freely. Then at one point it was wide enough for Xander to get behind it and put all his weight into the effort, using the doorjamb for added leverage. The door eventually swung all the way open.

It was dark inside the vast vault room, but after a moment his eyes adjusted enough that the filtered light from outside allowed him to see. The room was undamaged, and placed haphazardly on the floor were a number of strange looking objects. Most were drones, either quadcopters or octocopters, some oversized and measuring as much as twelve feet across. These were the next generation of attack drones being developed for the military. They were capable of carrying up to a ton of weapons, ammo and sensing equipment.

An MQ-3 Predator—the P3—was in the room as well. Unlike its now outdated namesake, this was a nearly-autonomous octocopter with an effective range of one hundred miles from its operator or relay station. This craft was of a true drone design, deviating from the aircraft configuration of its predecessor. The P3 would have the ability to operate in a target zone for several hours, defending itself against counterattack, while expanding its mission to eliminate multiple targets during its time on station.

Unfortunately, several of the earlier versions of the P3 had found their way to Iran and other terrorist host nations, where crude yet effective knock-offs were being manufactured. A hotel in London had been attacked by one of these units six months ago. The entire building was brought down before enough firepower could be brought in to take it out.

Open-source technology, financed by rogue nations, was proving to be a deadly combination. If an American location was targeted by one of these killer drones, even the assets of the RDC would be inadequate to bring it down, at least until the P3’s were deployed to the rapid-response bunkers—if any bunkers remained after today.

As impressive as the arsenal of next-generation drones might have been, that wasn’t what Xander was looking for. His gave out an audible sigh of relief when he found the prize.

He ran toward the back of the room.

“What the hell is that?” Tiffany asked.

“It’s our ticket out of here.”

The object sat on the floor of the vault, and wasn’t more than a foot thick in its forward and aft sections. It had four overlapping rings of metal, with propellers contained in each of them, two in front and two in back, plus a small dual arrangement of small ringed propellers in the rear. Between the large double rings was a narrow platform with two padded seats placed in a row, and under the platform was a long, narrow black box which the apparatus sat on.

“This is the Mallory Systems H-59 Hoverbike,” Xander explained.

“That thing can fly?” Tiffany voice conveyed her lack of confidence in the vehicle.

“Not really fly, per se. The max altitude is about forty-five feet, and only for brief periods. But it can scoot along the ground at close to a hundred miles per hour, and can even jump over small canyons and cross rivers.”

“Groovy,” Tiffany said as she jumped on the odd-looking vehicle and straddled the rear seat. Xander was taken aback, thinking it would take a lot more convincing to get her on board. “What are we waiting for?” she asked. Seeing his quizzical look, she continued: “Kentucky-bred farm girl, been riding horses since I was five. This is nothing I can’t handle. So hurry, your playmates may come back at any time.”

Xander sat in the driver’s seat. “Buckle in,” he said over his shoulder. “I may have to do some radical maneuvers before this is all over.”

With a flick of a switch, the quad rotors began to spin, producing a low-pitched hum much quieter than even the tiny drones that had attacked the base. Dust and loose papers swirled in the vault, causing both driver and passenger to cough and cover their eyes. But then the strange craft lifted off the floor. “There are pitch and yaw controls, but it’s mainly steered by shifting your weight,” Xander called out over the sound of the wind from the propellers. “It’s just like on a motorcycle— lean into the turns and we’ll do fine.”