Edited by Aldous.
Work is still going crazy. I've never seen a flu season this bad and this late. No Sage of Humanity chapter this week. I just don't have the time. Sorry.
Chapter 105
Feeling of war in the air
Freya was crouching beside her grandfather on a cliff looking down at her hometown. She had no idea why they were hiding and looking down at her hometown. Looking down, she could see an old, rusted truck bouncing down Main Street over the many potholes. She looked out to the far end of her town and saw the piers full of fishing boats, but that confused her because the weather was wrong for so many of them to be in port together.
While the sun was high, she could still feel the biting cold of winter as the wind blew across her face. She took a deep breath and could smell salt and rot in the air. The rot seemed stronger today than any day she had ever remembered. What was worse, she could tell it was high tide from looking at how high the boats were riding. From that she knew that there shouldn’t be that strong of a rot smell in the air.
“Can you feel it, mon chou?” Her grandfather asked in his heavily accented English. Freya felt a bit of warmth in her chest as he called her by her old nickname.
“Feel what, Papa?” Freya asked her grandfather as she suddenly found herself holding her ASO long barrel rifle. She adjusted it to be more comfortable then looked through her scope, searching the town like she did when she hunted her enemies as a marine.
She didn’t see any signs of an enemy, nor did she anything that would indicate something was about to go wrong. Her eyes found her mini map, but there was nothing on it. No enemies, no people, or even buildings. It was completely blank. She looked down towards the town, but it was gone now. There was only greyish white snow untainted by any signs of life. The field of snow ended at the water's edge. The ocean was remarkably calm.
“War is coming.” He told her. “Lots of people are gonna die, now.”
“Papa?” Freya asked, looking away from her scope, and up at him.
She found herself looking at her Papa who looked like he did the last time they hunted together. He was unshaven as he alway was except on Sundays, when he would shave before he went to church. It was the only day of the week he shaved. If they were hunting, he would forget about shaving and grow a short white beard. From the growth she guessed he hadn’t shaved in at least a week.
He wore his old, brown, fur hunting hat with the flaps down to cover his ears. She could see the tips of his salt and pepper hair peeking out the back of his hat, curling upwards. His face was lined as some people got when they spent too much time in the sun. His nose was thin and narrow and his bluish-white eyes looked as sharp as they always did. She could see his breath as he breathed in and out in the cold air.
“Time to wake up.” He said, but this time without his normal accent.
“What?” Freya asked, confused. Her grandfather reached out and thumped her in the chest.
“Magic, it’s time.” Her grandfather said, sounding strangely like Lurch, and he thumped her in the chest again.
Freya opened her eyes and found herself in her dropship. She could hear the sound of the ramp being lowered through the microphones in her armor. She looked around to see her team getting out of their seats. Before she really thought about it she had already hit the release button on her seatbelt and stood up.
“Secure the LZ. No mines or auto turrets. Cannon is coming in with a few militia.” Mother said over the radio.
“Monkeyman, you got B side of the ship. BT, you got D. Lurch, C. I’ll get A.” Freya told them, meaning that Monkeyman would get the right side of the ship from the cockpit. Lurch would get the ramp at the rear of the ship, while BT would get the left side. That left her at the front of the ship.
Her reasoning was that both BT and Monkeyman had the bigger weapons, so they got the two largest parts of the ship to cover. Lurch had the weakest weapon, so he got the ramp which soon would have Cannon and the militia coming in with their weapons. She got the smallest part of the ship, so she could also help cover the left or right of the ship as well as the front of the ship. It was standard practice with scout teams when covering the ship in a hostile environment.
Freya didn’t waste time as she ran down the ramp and circled around the ship towards the front. She looked at the mini map and saw her team deploying normally. She pulled her ASO off her back and slid down to her belly as she got about twenty feet from the front of the ship. She did a quick scan in front of her before going back and doing a detailed scan. She didn’t see anything, but she got a window on her HUD from a drone that Lurch had launched. She flipped it open, but turned on the transparency so she could keep an eye on it while she did her job protecting the ship. About twelve seconds after her ship had landed, it was protected by her team.
Not seeing an enemy in her scope, she checked her mini map for Cannon and her militia. As she did so, she started to wonder where Cannon had found her militia. The last thing she heard was Cannon was en route to the militia, but hadn’t arrived. The trip to pick up Cannon was only expected to take an hour or so. The only thing Freya could think of was that she wasn’t that far off from wherever the militia was hiding out. Shaking her head, she told herself to get her head in the game and stop getting distracted.
Checking Lurch’s drone feed, she saw Cannon leading a bunch of armed civilian-dressed people. She did a quick count and came to fourteen people including Cannon. She did the math and realized that they had more than enough room for everyone. She wondered if Mother was going to take them to the staging area or leave them at the base where the ship she was supposed to fly was kept. If it was her, she would keep them and drop them off with Second Squad’s scout team, or, if they were unreliable, drop them off back at the waystation to guard the civilians there.
She watched as Cannon stopped outside the dropship and encouraged the armed civilians into the ship. As she watched, she thought about the dream. “Was it a warning or just my subconscious dealing with the thought of people dying in the battle to come?” She wondered as the last straggler ran up the ramp followed by Cannon.
“I’ll go first, then Monkeyman followed by BT. Lurch, you’re last in.” Freya told them as she got up. She quickly ran to the ramp, but stopped and covered for Monkeyman as he started to retreat inside the ship. Once he got to her position he stopped and she ran up the ramp. She stopped at the top of the ramp and covered what she could see as BT took over Monkeyman’s position. Monkeyman joined in on the other side of the ramp. Finally, Lurch came running. He didn’t stop until he passed her. BT quickly retreated soon afterward and both her and Monkeyman pulled back as he passed them by. She hit the button to close the ramp. Only when the ramp was closed did she lower her weapon.
She turned around to see Cannon walking around talking to the militia. They seemed like a twitchy bunch. She would rate them lower than the ones who were guarding the plant. She recognized some corporate logo patches on their shirts. That made her wonder if that last batch of militia were Colonial Services or corporate minions. It would explain a few things if the militia from the plant were Colonial Service members.
Freya sat down next to Lurch right next to the ramp on the left side of the ship. She saw Monkeyman and BT on the far side of the ship next to the ramp as well. She slipped her rifle back on her back and leaned against the bulkhead before closing her eyes. She thought about the dream again. It was still crystal clear in her head.
“Should I say something to Captain Thompson?” She asked herself. She thought about the information in the dream and decided not to. If it was a prophetic dream then there was no new information. If it was just a normal dream, she didn’t want it to get out that she was scared. She wasn’t scared. Instead she felt kind of numb.
She opened her eyes and looked around. Monkeyman was messing with his holo tablet again. BT had his eyes closed and was leaning back against the bulkhead. Beside her, Lurch was bobbing his head to, she assumed, his music playlist. She checked the flight time and saw that they had a while until they got to their destination. She grabbed her tablet out from her backpack and turned on her music. Not feeling like sleeping, she went back to the article she had been reading before she fell asleep.
Some time later Mother came on her private channel. “Magic, the people in charge don’t want us to draw attention to their hiding spot. I’m going to have Fred hot drop your team right at their door. I’m sending you a map of the mountain they are hiding in, with a waypoint where their door is.”
“Understood.” Freya replied, feeling excited about the hot drop. It would be her first one from a dropship. Normally she was the pilot and other people hot dropped from her ship.
She looked at the map Mother sent and nodded to herself. The front door, as Mother called it, was flat plateau. It looked like the people there had collapsed part of the mountain on top of it, but she noted, from an aerial picture, that there was enough room between the rocks to get through. She sent the map, the picture, and the mission brief to her team before saying anything.
“Mission brief incoming.” Freya said, over the team’s talk-around-channel. “We’re going to hot drop right on top of their front door. It’s covered with some dirt and rocks, but there is enough room for us to squeeze by. The locals don’t want to draw attention to themselves so we are going to do this fast and clean. Questions?”
“How high are we dropping from?” Monkeyman asked.
Freya cursed for not thinking to ask. She checked her briefing and relaxed. “Twenty feet. We won’t need anything but ourselves.”
Then, because she read it in her mission brief, she said, “We drop in ten.”
“Understood.” Monkeyman said, nodding to her. She noted he had a small smile on his face. She smiled back then she started putting her stuff away.
At the two minute mark, she stood up with the rest of her team. Thaddeus and his team also stood up along with Cannon. Thaddeous’ team went to the front of the ship and dragged four small active camo generators over towards them while Cannon walked to stand with Freya and her team.
She looked her team over, but didn’t see anything out of place. She trusted them to have everything they needed, but she did look them over just in case. At the thirty-second mark, the door started to lower itself. She knew that Fred must have lowered it. She was only slightly annoyed that she didn’t get to press the button, but she told herself she was a grown woman who didn’t need to control everything. It didn’t help as she still really wanted to press the stupid button. She looked at Cannon who gave her a knowing smirk and nod. Freya nodded back before she turned back around to the dropping ramp.
At the ten-second mark, Freya walked to the middle of the dropship at the top of the ramp. The rest of her team lined up on both sides of her with the generators in front of them and Cannon standing off to the far right. The boxes were pushed forward towards the very edge of the ramp. Freya knew the boxes were shockproof, so she wasn’t worried about dropping them. What she was worried about was where they landed. If everything worked out right, all she had to do was push them out. The boxes would then deploy a small parachute with guidance thrusters. Lurch had already made sure the waypoint was locked in the guidance thrusters, so, if everything worked as expected, they would land right in front of the door with them.
She held herself in place by grabbing the straps on the ceiling, not that she needed to. She had to admit that Fred was doing a great job of keeping the ship steady with very little turbulence. She wondered if she could do a better job, but dismissed the thought. She had better things to think about.
At five seconds, Freya and her team crouched down and got ready to push the generators out of the dropship. Fred counted down and as soon as he hit one Freya pushed her generator out the door. It was followed by the others. She watched them all deploy their parachutes before she stood up.
Not wasting any more time Freya took a step up to the edge and leaped out of the dropship. Right away she noted that they were higher up than twenty feet. A quick glance at her HUD told her they were actually fifty feet up. She silently cursed Fred as she noted that the rest of her team and Cannon had already followed her out of the dropship.
She didn’t have time to do much except brace herself as she fell. The ground rose up fast as she braced herself like she was trained to in boot camp. Then she hit the ground. Her training immediately took over as she hit the ground with her legs bent for a brief second then she deliberately fell to her side letting her armor take the brunt of the fall. She grunted when her shoulder hit harder than she expected, but she was up in seconds, scanning the area for enemies.
Not seeing anything, she looked at her mini map for the closest box and found one falling near her. She looked in that general direction and saw it falling roughly fifty feet from her in the dark. The passive cam made it hard to see, but her sharp eyes spotted it easily enough. She ran over to it as it settled down on the mountain, the small parachute already retracting into the box. It started to roll, but Freya was there to brace it so it wouldn’t fall too far.
Bending down, she lifted the heavy box and put it onto her shoulder, leaving her right arm free, hanging near her pistol, in case she was attacked. She took a second to look at where the rest of her team had landed, and where the other boxes had come down. She spotted BT further up the mountain beside two boxes with Lurch. Cannon was roughly twenty feet away from them and running towards the last box. Monkeyman was further up the mountain, and, from what she could see, taking up a defensive position to cover the rest of the team.
She started up the mountain, mentally grumbling at the fact that she was the farthest down the mountain and had the longest trek up the mountain of her team. Lurch remained where he was as BT picked up both boxes and started up the mountain. He only started moving once Freya passed him, and even then he kept his back to her and guarded the rear.
Freya tried to move as fast as she could knowing she was exposed. She knew her armor’s active camo would hide her and her stuff, but the box was way too big to be hidden by her armor. BT’s heavy armor on the other hand could and did hide both boxes he was carrying. Freya would have passed it over to someone else, but the only other person on her team who had heavy armor was Cannon. Freya judged that she was too far away to pass the box off to her. She figured it would be faster to just run it up the mountain like she was.
She was panting by the time she reached the waypoint on her mini map that marked the entrance to the base under the mountain. The waypoint pointed to a spot in between two large boulders. BT had already disappeared by running in between them, but Cannon was waiting for her near them. Monkeyman had taken a defensive position above the boulders with his gun moving side to side as he guarded them. Lurch, according to her mini map, was still following behind her.
“Let me take that.” Cannon said as Freya got closer. Freya gladly passed the box off to her and took up position behind her as she moved between the boulders.
Freya quickly turned around once Cannon had passed beyond the boulders and raced after her. Lurch did the same once she passed the boulders. Freya watched on her mini map as Monkeyman dropped from the boulder he had been standing on and followed them in. Seeing her team was safe she focused on what was in front of her, which was BT and a very human-sized door. BT had dropped his boxes and was messing with the lock on the door. She noted it flashed red as she dropped her box beside the others.
“Lurch, the door.” She told him, seeing that BT wasn’t going to be able to open it. She resisted trying to hack the door herself because it wasn’t her job at the moment. Her job was to lead her team. She knew Lurch had the same training as she did in hacking. They both had the same special warfare badge. She trusted him to do the job.
It took him a couple of seconds before he bypassed the security and had the door open. She could have done it a bit faster with her Personal AI, but she didn’t begrudge him the extra second or two it took him to get it open. Each of them had primary jobs and hacking was one of his. At a time like this, hacking was her secondary job with her primary being a lookout with her high perception.
They left the boxes where they were as BT jumped through the door followed by Cannon. Monkeyman was third man in. Freya remained where she was, guarding the rear with Lurch, who was still at the door, until they called all clear. Both Cannon and BT came back through the door to pick up the boxes, leaving Monkeyman behind to guard the hallway. They were following standard procedure since they were in a hostile area. They would continue to do so until they met up with the militia. It paid to be cautious since they had no idea if the base had been lost or if the enemy were hiding somewhere close by.
Freya followed after Cannon, but moved up once she passed the door so she could be behind Monkeyman, who was taking point. The hallway was a very large, dirt tunnel that ran past the door they had entered from. To Freya, the hallway looked like a heavy machine passageway, but the door they entered through was too small for big, heavy equipment. The dirt, she noted, was oddly red, which made her wonder if the ground around them had heavy deposits of ferric oxides.
The hallway was lit up with surprisingly bright lights that were hung on the sides of the walls close to the ceiling. The light was coming from thin, but long light fixtures. The tunnel itself was maybe fifteen feet wide and about ten or so feet tall. The tunnel was rectangular in cross-section, but it didn’t have supports like Freya thought it should to keep it from caving in.
The bright tunnel ended in a large door. The door was one of those split doors where the bottom and top split apart when it was opened. There was a console next to the door which had a red light coming from it. She didn’t need to examine it closer to know it was locked.
“I don’t like this.” Freya said to Cannon over her private channel. “There should be guards, or at least surveillance cameras here.”
“There is at least one camera.” Cannon replied pointing at the console. “We should call them before we try to hack our way in.”
“I agree.” Freya replied.
“Lurch, get us access to the elevator, but don’t do anything except give them a ring. Let them know we’re out here.” She said over the team's command channel.
“On it.” Lurch replied as he made his way forward towards the elevator console.
About a minute later Lurch stood back and said, “Got it. Sent them a ping.”
“Hello?” A young female voice asked, coming out of the console.
“Federation Marines, Ma’am.” Lurch replied.
“Okay.” The voice replied. “Let me get the watch commander.”
A few minutes later the red light on the console turned green and there came a hum from the doors as they separated, revealing an elevator. Lurch entered and checked it out. He nodded to Freya, who ordered her team in. As soon as Monkeyman got in, the elevator door closed and it started moving down. Freya looked at the console and noted that they were on the fourth floor. She watched as the numbers decreased until they hit one then a B appeared before the numbers which were now increasing.
They stopped at B8 and the door opened again to reveal some impressive fortifications. There was electro-razor wire in front of standing steel plates that hid several auto turrets. There was even a black and white sign that stated that there was a minefield amongst the other fortifications. Behind the auto turrets was another set of steel plating where several armed people were waiting. One of them waved at them.
“Come on through.” The man told them.
A little unnerved, Freya quickly led the way through the defenses. A tall, thin man with grey hair smiled at them as they passed by the last of the auto turrets and approached the final metal plating. “Commander Jussieu, former botanist, now commander of the planet’s milia. At your service.” The tall thin man said with a small smile.
“Sergeant Torres, liaison between the Marines and the militia. You can call me Cannon. This is Corporal O’Malley, team leader for Scout Team One. She is also our pilot. I hear you have a ship we can use?” Cannon asked as she shook Jessieu’s hand.
“Yes indeed.” Jessieu replied, letting go of Cannon’s hand. “Right this way. Dennis, go help the marines with their stuff.”
A big man with tattoos on his arms leaned his rifle against the standing metal plating and walked up to Freya. “Dennis.” The man said, holding out his hand.
“Freya, but people call me Magic.” Freya said, as she accepted the man's hand. Right away he squeezed her hand with much greater strength than a normal human. Freya squeezed back, but it was much weaker than his.
She hid her reaction and wondered about the man. “High grav worlder?” She wondered as he let go.
“You must be a scout.” He said in his deep rumbling voice. “No other marine would have such low strength mods.”
“Hence the title, team leader of Scout Team One.” Freya replied, forcing herself not to rub her hand to ease the pain. “Where did you get your mods?”
“Used to be a private back in the day.” He told her, looking down at her with a blank expression. “Got honorably discharged for not getting enough E-points. My mods got turned back on when all this started. Didn’t know that was possible.”
“Didn’t know that either.” Freya admitted. “Grab a box, and let’s go.” To her relief, he nodded to her before he went and picked up two boxes from the elevator. BT took the other two.
The commander led them through a series of confusing, red dirt tunnels that Freya would have been hopelessly lost in if not for her mini map tracking where they were going. It didn’t show where she hadn’t been yet, as it was greyed out. She almost asked Lurch to fire off one of his drones so that she had a good idea of the area, but didn’t. She did launch her own sensor drone which picked up a few other tunnels, but it’s range was pretty short.
As they walked down the tunnels they passed a bunch of people. Most of them were unarmed. Each time they passed one of them, Freya and her group got a lot of looks. Most of them looked hopeful, but there were a few that looked really scared. Freya was not sure if they were scared of them or what they represented.
“This is a slurry mine.” Freya overhead the commander, who was walking in front of her with Cannon, say. “We mine minerals and use them to create temporary buildings that are only expected to last less than a hundred years. It’s cheaper than shipping in a lot of printer fluid this early in the colony’s settlement.”
“I thought you guys were just terraforming. I didn’t know you were already in the settlement phase.” Cannon replied.
“Figure of speech.” The Commander replied. “We won’t start accepting settlers for another hundred years at the earliest. Right now, this planet can’t support anyone for more than two years without supplies being shipped in.”
Cannon was quiet for a few minutes as they walked past a group of people with the Colonial Service patch on their clothing. “Just how many people do you have here?” Cannon asked, once the group was gone.
“Six thousand or thereabouts.” The commander replied.
“That’s a lot of people.” Cannon said, sounding amazed. Freya had to agree. As far as she was aware this had to be the biggest group of people on the planet.
“This is the main shelter on the planet.” The Commander explained. “This is why it’s so important to keep this place a secret.”
“I agree.” Cannon replied as they rounded a corner and came to a huge room.
The room was at least three hundred yards wide and had to be about twice that long. It was hard to tell as the floor sloped upwards and faded away into the darkness. The room was full of all sorts of machinery and vehicles. There was an entire row of diggers that must have, Freya guessed, dug all the tunnels they just walked through. There were countless trucks of all sizes parked in the nearest rows, and, at the very far end facing the slope of the room, was a huge cargo plane. The thing was huge. At a guess, Freya figured it had to be at least three hundred feet long and about four stories tall. It dominated the room, standing out in the background.
“I don’t know if we brought enough generators along.” Freya muttered out loud.
“We can make do.” A woman said as she walked up to them. “Master Engineer Alues, at your service.”
“Alues is our chief engineer.” The Commander said, nodding to the woman. “She’s retired Navy and keeps everything running around here. Alues, this is Sergeant Torres and Corporal O’Malley. They go by Cannon and Magic. They’re here for the plane.”
“Got that.” Alues replied, nodding to the boxes. “If you boys would be ever so kind. Bring those boxes this way, so I can get my team started installing them.”
“Magic.” Cannon said, nodding to the Master Engineer. Freya nodded back and followed the woman as Cannon stayed behind to talk with the commander some more.
“How many Mechs can that thing hold?” Freya asked, as she followed beside Alues.
“I assume you’re wanting to know about the civilian Mechs, as we don’t have the military ones. About fifty, but we only have thirty-one in working order. I’ve got my team working around the clock to fix the rest, but we don’t have any printer fluid left to make the parts. We are using the slurry to manufacture some of them, but we can’t replace everything we need with it.”
“You sure we have enough generators to hide that thing?” Freya asked as they passed the last line of trucks and saw the plane up close.
“It’s not going to be perfect.” The engineer admitted. “But it will get the job done. The biggest thing we needed to do was soundproof the engines. Those constructs had pretty good eyes, but they’ve got amazing hearing. You’ll need to fly high at least a thousand feet up to keep them from hearing you.”
“What about when I’m landing?” Freya asked, shocked.
“You’re gonna have to kill the engines then coast in on your maneuvering engines.” Came the reply. “It’s ain’t going to be pretty, but you’re a hotshot Marine pilot. I’m sure you’ll be fine.”
Freya stopped and just looked at the woman. Alues stopped and smiled at Freya. “You are a hotshot pilot, ain't cha?” She asked Freya, who sighed and rubbed her head.