On Silver Wings (24 page)

Rock dust, skin cells, some pollen trace.

All of it several months old.

Sorilla rose back to her feet, eyes scanning the tunnels as she considered things for a long moment.
No heat trace, no tracks, nothing down here but me. Could they possibly have ignored the tunnels under the colony? They have to know that they’re here.

She shook off the feeling. The tunnels checked as clear, no sign of any inhabitation since before the invasion. Above ground she’d be spotted, just like the last time. The infrasound devices were probably receivers as well, tracking footfalls, even heartbeats possibly. That had to be how they tracked her the first time, so the tunnels were the only reasonable options she could see.

Too bad they felt like a trap.

Screw it.
She pushed off the feeling, it wasn’t useful and she didn’t have time for it even if it was. She began moving again, slower now as she was approaching her goal. If her calculations were right she’d be coming right in under the target area anytime at all.

Another hundred meters down the tunnels she rounded a corner and came to a halt, eyes widening under her helm as she examined what remained of the corridor.

Well, this might be why they ignored the tunnels,
Sorilla scowled as she examined the collapsed area ahead of her.

The debris blocking her way was fresh, mostly local concrete from what she could tell, but it was clearly stacked too neatly to be an accidental collapse. Sorilla sighed, calling up the schematics again. She could backtrack, circle around and try another route, but she didn’t think it would be any better. If they collapsed one section of the tunnels, they certainly collapsed the rest.

She crossed the secondary route from her list of options, highlighting the schematics for a moment until she spotted a surface access close to the cave in, back twenty meters from her current position and north thirty. She may not be able to come in from under them, but the tunnels had gotten her close enough.

She jogged back, making it to the stairwell in just a minute, then slowed to a proverbial crawl as she swept the route ahead with every step. Her rifle butt was fitted close to her shoulder as she moved up the stairs to the access door.

Sorilla dropped to a crouch by the door and killed her active night observation mode before testing the door and slowly pulling it open.

Still quiet.
She thought as she peered out through the passive light amplification mode, examining the colony as best she could from her new position. The infrasound was back, however, so quiet was perhaps a misnomer in some ways. Sorilla made sure that her armor was still isolating the signal, then edged out of the access building and back into Hayden air.

Her corneal implant flashed slightly, drawing her attention to the chrono app in the corner.

Jerry should be kicking things off anytime now.

*****

Better than fifty miles away, Jerry settled into a crouch as he watched the workers clearing out the jungle ahead of him. The invaders worked twenty four hours a day, like clockwork, if they weren’t being interfered with by strikes and ambushes you could set your time app by their progress through the jungle.

“They’re slipping into the zone now.”

Jerry looked aside at Dean, who had crawled over to his position. The younger man still wore bandages over his ears from the near miss with the nuclear explosion months earlier, but he refused to be kept back from the fight.

“Good. Spread the word to pull back, I’ll light the fuses and be right behind you.”

Dean nodded and drew back, heading toward the main group to spread the word. Jerry watched him go for a moment, then turned his attention back to the main event as it were.

He checked the time app on his pocket slate and nodded to himself.

Right on time. Good luck, Sergeant.
He thought as he put the slate away and manually connected the fiber cables laying by his feet to the power source.

“Alright, we’re live.” He whispered, hefting his assault rifle as he followed Dean’s path back through the jungle.

Behind him a series of explosions rocked the world, illuminating the jungle in a series of flashes and an orange red glare.

Step one complete, now on the step two.

Reed broke out of the jungle into a clearing that hadn’t existed twelve hours earlier to find a couple dozen men and woman waiting for him, perched on and around three Cougar battle tanks while eight armed scout D.O.G.S sat in their midst.

“Alright, you know what to do.” He told the people, “Break into groups, find whatever is left and harass them as much as you can.”

He grinned at them, “Just remember, friends don’t get friends nuked. K?”

They laughed as they hefted their weapons and hopped down off the tanks, breaking into three man squads as they headed into the jungle. Reed watched them go for a moment, leaving him in the jungle with Dean, Bethany, and almost a dozen killer robots.

“Cheery.” He muttered as he walked forward, tossing his rifle to Dean. “Hang on to this for a sec.”

Dean caught it easily, “You got it.”

Jerry stepped up onto one of the Cougars, pulling himself up by the twenty millimeter railgun. He swiped his fingers across the biometric security panel and quickly found himself gazing into a dark red eye glowing at him.

“Identify.”

“Reed, Jerry.” He said, creeped out by the alien sounding voice of the war machine. “Authorization, Aida Niner Bravo Sierra Hayden Twelve.”

“
Confirmed. Orders
?”

“Asymmetric Warfare, plot Bravo.” Reed told the machine, giving it its marching orders. “Maintain maximum engagement range, stay mobile. Assume overwhelming opposition.”

“
Confirmed. Orders
?”

“Engage.” Reed ordered, closing the panel and jumping off as the Cougar’s turbine wound up and its motors engaged.

“Confirmed.” It rumbled as it, and the other automated platforms, moved out of the clearing and into the Hayden jungle.

Reed took his weapon back from Dean, checking the magazine on reflex before nodding to the jungle. “Now it’s just us.”

“What’s the game, Boss?” Dean asked as he and Bethany followed Reed toward the jungle.

“We’ll play clean up,” Reed decided, “ghost the other teams, give them cover if we can, pull them out if things go bad. Clear?”

“Clear.”

“Sounds good.”

“Alright, let’s go.”

*****

Military theories of Asymmetric Warfare existed almost as far back in human history as warfare itself. The Spartans at Thermopylae, the Samurai on the Bridge, even tales of brigand heroes like Robin Hood all fell into the category.

Historically the best examples always revolved around forces that were faced with overwhelming force in their enemies, the necessity of the situation breeding the brilliance of their maneuvers.

Victory wasn’t the goal for such warriors, whether they realized it or not. It was about making victory impossible, or at least impossibly expensive, for their enemies. Keep forcing the enemy to pour more and more resources into the front of a conflict until they couldn’t afford to pour any more down a seemingly bottomless pit.

Eventually, if the deaths don’t cause them to pull back, the sheer lack of resources will.

Every aspect of Sorilla’s plan for the Hayden resistance was designed based around those theories, in fact her entire career had revolved around Asymmetric concepts. She had trained, like all green berets special operations, to go into a troubled area and build a resistance core from local people and resources.

So when planning the Hayden resistance tactics, Sorilla put everything she knew from any useable source she could into the effort.

Hit and run tactics from the revolutionary war, jungle warfare techniques from Vietnam, IED tactics from Afghanistan, and of course whatever she could from every terrorist organization ever recorded.

It was these tactics that lead to the opening gambit Reed initiated against the invaders and, in fact, Sorilla herself planned to use in its wake on her end of the operation.

In the aftermath of the initial attack, the small squads of the Hayden Militia descended on the disorganized surviving targets and opened up with mid-range automatic fire. Hails of direct fire rounds slammed down on already stunned and disorientated targets, shattering armor and destroying cohesion in an instant.

The militia didn’t let up, they knew that any momentary respite would let their targets potentially call in a fatal artillery strike from their local firebase. They’d also learned through hard experience, however, that the enemy network was neither omnipotent nor omniscient. Overloading their ability to backtrack attacks was effective at preventing them from delivering that killer long range strike.

It was as Sorilla had once told them, the Golems and Goblins weren’t enemy military. They were the equivalent of bulldozers and forklifts, putting down a guerrilla force just wasn’t their specialty.

So when the secondary hail of fire rained down on them, the hapless Golems and Goblins were torn apart by the follow up to the initial sabotage and in that moment phase two was successfully completed.

Signals were sent, some were not, and in both cases responses were drawn up by an enemy that had so far proved itself fatally predictable in its responses. Far from the ambush site, across miles of jungle, military drones leapt into the air and hummed to the attack.

For one Sergeant Sorilla Aida that was the signal to begin phase three.

A familiar hum penetrated her armor, causing Sorilla to drop to a crouch as a flicker of motion exploded along the side of her HUD. One of the enemy flyers tore into the sky, bringing a smile to her lips as she consulted her chrono app.

Right on time.
She thought, tipping her head to Reed’s timing as she turned in the direction of the motion’s source.

The flyer had appeared right in the center of the area she’d narrowed the probable enemy location at, so Sorilla rose from her position after the flyers had flitted away and ran toward the concrete wall between her and her target. She jumped up, scissoring over the twelve foot wall, and landed in an easy crouch on the other side.

Got you.
She grinned under her helm as she saw heavy slab doors closing on a deep hole in the ground that she knew wasn’t on any of the Colony specs. Sorilla bolted for the doors, dropping through them before they could close and free fell for a dozen meters before landing in a three point crouch on the floor of an immense hanger.

This may have been a touch impetuous.
She thought dryly as several bipedal alien creatures turned to stare at her in obvious shock.

The stared at her for an interminable moment before the first of them acted, lifting what every instinct in Sorilla’s body identified as ‘weapon’. She extended her right arm, leveling her assault weapon single handed, and haloed the alien in her HUD. When the HALO flickered from white to red, she squeezed off a round even as she turned away.

The electromagnetic launcher ejected the heavy round at a subsonic speed, crossing the range between Sorilla and the alien in less time than it took to blink, and slammed into the big alien across the hanger. The heavy round tumbled moments after penetration, tearing its way through the flesh and came to a stop within the powerful body.

The target hadn’t hit the ground before Sorilla redirected her attention to other, dissimilar aliens that were manning the equipment at the far end of the hanger. They stared back at her with large dark eyes and grey skin that reminded her of stories from Earth, describing alien visitors. The incongruity of the alien’s looks only stumped her for a moment before she haloed them as well and squeezed off a burst as her rifle came around to bear.

Heavy depleted uranium rounds slammed into the targets across the hanger, slamming the aliens against the far wall with brutal force. Sorilla rose to her feet as she took a moment to look around, examining her surroundings with care now that she had a few moments to consider.

It was almost a stereotypical hanger, obviously for VTOL attack craft. There were flyers in racks against the far wall, obviously waiting to be activated. Similarly Golems and Goblins stood immobile near them, with what was probably rows of ordnance racked up nearby.

A ready response team, then.
She thought as she walked over to the fallen grey aliens, ignoring for a moment the security guard. She was more interested in the technicians than the shooter, and most especially the technicians’ toys.

She stepped over the bodies, not looking at them for the moment as she examined the consoles they were standing by. The devices were partially familiar, flat and holographic displays close enough to standard issue gear for her to recognize a fair percent of it. Sorilla focused in on what appeared to be a telemetry panel, linked to one of the flyers that had just launched.

That’s a ballistic graph… are these numbers?
She frowned, her on board computer analyzing the symbols that were passing through the displays and running them through every code breaking algorithm she had available. She doubted it would give her much, but it was just possible that she might be able to decipher their number system if nothing else.

With those orders given to her computer, Sorilla turned her own attention to the system itself as she tried to decipher the control systems. It only took a few seconds, however, for he to determine that she couldn’t locate any!

Impossible. They have to be here somewhere…
She growled, tapping the screens lightly and sweeping the holographs the way she would human systems. No buttons, levers, or keys to tap, and nothing she did to the displays got any reaction at all. Sorilla growled again, then grabbed up one of the dead bodies at her feet and swept the displays with the alien’s fingers.

Still nothing. If it’s biometric security it seems to be able to tell if the authorized user is alive or not. Great.

She dropped the corpse and examined the rest of the area quickly, finally coming over to the armed guard that had been her first kill upon arriving.