On Silver Wings (18 page)

“Alright, we’re going to ruck out about fifty odd miles, back to where Dean and I saw them working.” She told them, “Keep quiet, no talking, and for god’s sake don’t take any potshots at them if you can avoid it…”

The men grunted, some laughing bitterly, some shaking their heads.

They weren’t likely to forget that the enemy responded to sniper threats with nuclear assault.

“That said, if you do have to take a shot, move your ass. Don’t hang around for the fireworks,” She ordered, “And do the rest of us a favor and don’t keep it to yourselves, right?”

They chuckled, nodding in agreement.

Right.

Sorilla shouldered her pack, “Let’s move.”

*****

“They’ve made progress since we checked last.” Sorilla said as she knelt on the hilltop knoll, watching the Golems and Goblins as they worked at clearing back the jungle below. “A lot of progress.”

Jerry was laying back on the rear side of the hill, examining what she was seeing through the portable computer she’d passed him. “What the hell are they doing?”

“I’m not sure.” Sorilla admitted, “I thought that it was some kind of defensive emplacements before, but this doesn’t look like anything I’ve ever seen.”

The Golems had apparently blazed a trail almost a mile wide and longer than she could determine, and behind them the Goblins had come along and paved it. Or at least she thought it was paved, whatever it was the surface was gleaming white and seemed as solid as any concrete she’d ever seen.

“Is that a landing strip?” Reed asked.

“Can’t be. They’ve got some kind of gravity tech, remember? What would they need with a landing strip?” She countered, frowning. “I’ve never seen concrete that white. It’s almost a reflector…”

“Solar power?”

“Wrong angles.” Bethany Caern said, entering into the conversation. “They’d have to have a collector in orbit to catch the energy, and if you’re going to do that it’s easier and more efficient to leave the reflectors up there too.”

Sorilla and Jerry turned to look at her in surprise.

“What? I worked energy collectors as my minor before taking up exobiology.” She shrugged.

“Right. Well, then what is it?”

Sorilla shook her head, “Don’t know. Doesn’t really matter, I guess. Let’s go blow it to hell.”

The two former field researchers glanced at each other with wide eyes as the soldier gathered her kit and broke position. She was halfway down the hill before they started moving to catch up.

*****

They got ahead of the work, staying in the jungle as they circled around. Sorilla had the men get ready for some heavy work of their own as she took time to survey the area carefully.

“Ok, they’ll be coming through here.”

“You’re sure?” Jerry asked.

She nodded, “Yeah. The road or whatever it is that they’re building curves very precisely. It’ll bring them right through here. So here is where we’ll start.”

“Start what?”

She just smiled evilly, then circled her arm in the air. “Let’s get to work, boys and girls. We’ve got a reception party to prepare.”

They had maybe two days lead on the advancing Golems and Goblins, Sorilla figured, which meant that they would have to work hard but they should be able to put down a nice welcome party for the group with some sweat and luck.

Given the zeroing capability of the enemy, she didn’t want to use any direct fire or even ballistic weapons unless it became unavoidable. Both could be tracked back to their source, and when the enemy was willing to split your atoms for putting a bullet in the air, it just wasn’t cost effective to give him any more advantages.

In theory the military rifles they’d picked up should be proof against that sort of source backtracking, but she didn’t want to chance it for obvious reasons. Until she had a better idea of the enemy’s tech she couldn’t assume that they used thermal, sonic, or radar systems to triangulate weapons fire like the US Military did.

Against those systems her rifle was effectively proofed to be invisible. It used an electromagnetic launcher to accelerate the round out of the barrel, leaving no heat trace, then engaged fin guidance and scramjet motors to accelerate the round to hypersonic velocities once it was clear of her position. Against human tech she could pick off a target from as much as fifteen miles away, if she had a spotter with eyes on, and then walk away entirely undetected.

The problem was she still didn’t know how they’d detected her team on entry, and really didn’t know a damn thing about the enemy’s capabilities at all.

That was one of the biggest reasons she was taking the war back a few centuries, fighting atom bombs with shovels and saws made a lot more sense than doing the same thing with guns and grenades. Odds were you were boned either way in her experience, but if you were very good, and very, very lucky, you could inflict a lot more damage with a shovel than you could with a bullet.

“Reed, take two men and start cutting down trees. I want them at least eight foot in diameter.” Sorilla said, surveying the area, “Everyone else, let’s get digging.

*****

Days in the jungle, in any jungle, can seem like an eternity. When you’re working in that same oppressive heat, seconds feel even longer. The funny thing about that, in Sorilla’s opinion at least, was then despite all of that a deadline still rushed up on you with terrifying speed.

They weren’t able to finish even half of what she wanted to get done, partly because the crew was far from experienced in asynchronous warfare tactics but mostly because Sorilla herself had underestimated the challenges of working with Hayden hardwood trees. The higher oxygen and slightly higher gravity of the alien world had left its trees with correspondingly denser material.

She shrugged it off and made notes for the next time. For now, she had other concerns to address.

“Alright, everyone clear out. Put as much distance between you and this place as you can,” She ordered, nodding to Reed. “Don’t go straight back to camp, Reed make sure you cover your trails.”

“Right.” He nodded, “What about you?”

“I’ll meet up with you back at camp,” she said, “Give me a few days.”

“You’re planning on hanging around, aren’t you?”

“We need intel.” She said, “This is how we get it.”

Reed frowned, shaking his head, “I don’t like it. I’ll stay with you.”

“No offence, Reed, but this is what I do.” Sorilla told him, “What you do is get your guys out of here so none of you are in my way if this all goes south, right?”

He started to object, but she just stared him down until he finally nodded.

“Right.”

Sorilla helped them get their kit packed away and then hustled them clear of the area ahead of the enemy movements coming their way. Once she was sure they were well clear, she doubled back and headed to the spot she’d scouted out when they arrived.

Camouflage is more than just color or patterns, in fact it had more to do with contrast and breaking up a silhouette. Stalking a target meant making yourself look like part of the scenery, becoming an element of the natural world you were moving through, and basically looking like anything other than a human being.

On Earth that was how it worked, at least. Against other humans, and against human sensing technologies.

All she could do was fall back on her training, adjust where she had better on site intelligence, and hope for the best. So she started to gather up local plants, shoving them into pockets built into her vest and pants to break up her profile, and slathered mud from the jungle floor across her arms, face, and neck wherever flesh was exposed.

It was time to see just how good the enemy was at watching their backsides.

She dug into a small depression about two thirds of the way up the hill she’d chosen to watch from, resisting the urge to hide around the backside and peak over the top. It was a common misconception, and often lethal error, among rookies to consider the high ground as the most advantageous position on a potential battlefield. Particularly when stalking, you wanted to avoid places that might place your silhouette against the even backdrop of the sky. It was a dead giveaway, and the most common mistake made by amateur wannabe snipers.

Instead she curled up in a position about a quarter of the way down the hill, near a thick tree that had staked its claim to the leeward side of a granite boulder. She dug in a little, staying away from the straight lines of the boulder and the tree itself, instead making herself into one more small bush among many in the area, and then she waited.

Six hours passed, then twelve. Night fell and dawn rose before she heard the rhythmic thumping that she knew could only be caused by non-natural sources. The heat of the day was on her before the first movement betrayed the approach of the lead elements of the enemy formation.

The smaller Goblins were first, moving ahead of the slower moving Golems. Sorilla watched, her implants recording data, as the Goblins policed the area. They cleared out smaller shrub and debris, basically preparing the area for the arrival of their bigger brethren. Sorilla was glad that they’d taken the Goblins into account when they gone to work on the area over the past day and a half, otherwise the lead element could have kicked off the party entirely too soon.

The first of the Golems turned up about an hour after the lead Goblin, trudging along at a lumbering pace that reminded Sorilla of an elephant as it moved. Deceptively slow, but with obvious power behind it. The Golem stopped at a tree marked by the Goblins and began to burn it out of the ground with a laser or arc system. The smoke from the burning tree was just reaching her nose as another handful arrived and moved to their own trees.

A near inaudible creak was the first sign that one of the Golems had tripped one of the rigs they’d put in place, and Sorilla had to force herself not to look around to see which one. The question was answered a moment later when an eighty ton Hayden hardwood trunk swung down on carbon fiber cable, impacting a Golem at just over forty miles an hour and pinned the big boy to a still standing tree.

Even Sorilla winced as the Golem was shattered by the force of impact.

Everything froze for a long moment, the Goblins and Golems alike slowly turned to look at their felled sibling, and then the long boring wait Sorilla had settled in for erupted into a made minute of action as the jungle beneath her practically exploded.

Deadfalls made from huge Hayden trees collapsed, pinning or outright smashing the units trying to get clear of the area even as others collapsed into pit traps loaded with directional explosive charges that sent plumes of plasma straight into the sky, along with pieces of the unfortunate unit that had fallen in.

Trip wires made of incredibly strong carbon fiber cabling snapped into place, tensioned by the falling tree trunks, and turned the jungle floor into a crisscrossed nightmare to navigate. Several times a Golem moving to escape the area tumbled over one of those, only to set off another rigged area and be crushed, blown up, or simply trapped by one of the snares Sorilla had had the Hayden group put into place.

Her satisfaction with the results was put in hold, however, when a sudden tension in her chest nearly caused Sorilla to break cover and run. She hadn’t felt that sort of fear in so long it was almost an alien force in itself. Iron nerves and unrelenting tactical training kept her in place as she began to scan the area for the cause.

It’s like that night at the colony sight.
She thought tensely, eyes darting around as she fought down the panic she was feeling.

When a slow chill entered the area, bringing involuntary shudders from her, Sorilla knew that the game had changed. She couldn’t locate the source, however, until a low hiss from above redirected her attention to the jungle canopy.

Air support.

It was bigger than a golem, barely making any sound as it dropped through the canopy and nimbly moved through the large bulk of the trees. It dropped over a still active Golem and six spindly legs closed shut over the large unit before a slightly louder hiss sounded and the two lifted off.

Sorilla watched as the enemy units were withdrawn one by one by the flyers, pulled out of the danger area by the numbers. She was impressed, actually, the action had been smooth and planned out in detail. After the initial panicked reaction, if it was actually panic, the response showed excellent training, or at least contingency planning.

After they had all been pulled out, Sorilla slowly pulled back as well. She wanted to be well clear of the area in case they decided to nuke it in order to clear the traps from the terrain. That would be something of an overreaction, in her opinion, but they’d already proven capable of that. She moved around the hill, not over the top of it, and sheltered among some boulders on the far side while hunkering down again to wait.

They were building whatever it was they were building for a reason, they had to clear the area one way or the other. Now that they’d pulled out the Golems and Goblins, what was the next step?

The answer to that question took more than another day and a half to materialize. She was slowly stretching out a leg cramp when the first of the new units emerged. Four legged, about twice the size of a Golem but with considerably less bulk, and fast as all hell they broke through the jungle at maybe fifty kilometers an hour just a few dozen meters from her position. Sorilla froze in place, the cramp doubling up as she grimaced but kept her eyes steadily on the new units.

They skidded to a stop at the outskirts of the trapped area, pausing to scan or otherwise examine the area, then quickly broke ranks and began to methodically tear apart the jungle with invisible blasts of something she couldn’t identify. They tore up the jungle, sometimes picking up and flinging debris with the force of bullets.

She felt the tightening of her chest again as they closed on her position, the sense of barely suppressed terror telling her to flee, and the creeping chill that was so at odds with the hot jungle climate. She flashed back to what Tara had told her when she first woke up at camp, so many weeks ago.