Fear the Survivors (40 page)

Neal:
‘¿but how? I can see them spotting them if they were up close, but from a quarter mile out.’

Quavoce:
‘i am not aware of a technology that would allow them to target one of the suits from a distance. unless there was a second …’

Minnie:

Their view swam to a dizzying height, and suddenly they were a hundred miles above the earth, staring down through the morning haze to an undulating sea of green below. The view zoomed violently, splitting as it did so into two quadrants.

They could see the first plane, moving now, hunting, firing as it went. They could not make out its quarry, but only a blur of destruction as it darted this way and that, driving through the hillside and firing a line of destruction ahead of it. Minnie tried to focus ahead of the bullets, to see what it was chasing, but caught only momentary blurs as it danced this way and that. Whoever it was they were heading towards a gully. They would soon be exposed.

The second quadrant showed a very different scene. The second jet was lying in small crater, a plume of smoke coming from its nose as it tried to get airborne again. They could not know it, but it had been hit hard once more after Merik spat his last breath at it. This time in a concerted effort by Ben’s remaining two team members. He had sent them a strategic package, sealed with an order for absolute radio silence, and then set off at a run to lead the two planes away.

As the two predators had begun to track him, the first had followed the path Ben had intended, and his team had been waiting as he had ordered them to be. When they opened fire, one with his flechette gun, the other with the tamer, but still lethal barium laser he carried, they had blown apart its nose cone, ripping into its nose-mounted guns and forward thruster.

Neal:
‘¿what is that? it looks like a stratojet, but much smaller. ¿can we get an estimate on dimensions?’

Minnie began to overlay details, but the attention of the team was already on another set of movement. The view shifted away from the plane to the two men that had ambushed it. Whoever was on the ground there was embroiled in something close to a battle of the titans. It was an epic scene.

Ayala:
‘¿how many …?’

Minnie was already doing the calculation.

Minnie:
th
gen. battleskins, one with standard barium laser and sonic weaponry, the other with the flechette gun mod. the rest are wearing equivalent 1
st
gen. battleskins, carrying russian special forces an94 assault rifles.>

As she spoke, the screen was designating the members in the fight. The two 4
th
generation suits, assumed to be the remnants of Ben’s team, had clearly been set upon by a much larger but technologically inferior platoon of ground troops.

The scene was ultra-violent.

- - -

5
, 18
0
, 23
2
…>

His arm moved as if possessed, blanketing each target in turn as he allowed his AI to run amuck.

The counter ran down in his mind as he ripped at each target in turn. His opponents’ armor was saving them, but not all of them, he was winging each in turn as his gun blurred across them, a leg removed there, a forearm there. As one was decapitated, his threat counter adjusted, removing the attacker from his list of priorities.

But it was not much of an adjustment. The swarm still came, ever more fierce as he butchered their colleagues. He saw them coming in, he saw the wave washing up to him, their guns blaring into his armor. He felt the arc of security given by his surviving teammate at his back, their respective systems trying to keep up with each others’ rampaging defense of their combined position.

<44 attackers, 43, 42, 41 …>

There were thirty-seven left when the fight got personal.

As his conscious mind lost sway, he became animal. Still firing his weapon even at close range, he now used it as a sword, a saber, to maim and rend his attackers as they came at him. As one landed a tight-fisted blow to his ribs, another fist was coming at his face. He brought the butt off his flechette gun across the armpit of the second attacker, and as his body was hurled away from one opponent, his flechettes were opening up the shoulder of another, pummeling the joint and flesh to liquid.

His arms ripped and pulled. He no longer had footing, he was being assailed from every side, and every limb was a weapon. His boot was embedding itself in the face of one soldier, as his calf connected with the waist of another. He felt the butt of a rifle at his thigh before the actual bullets. He blocked the pain of the shots as they began to penetrate his knee and thigh, relying on the bionic reinforcement of his battleskin to bring his two legs together in a scissor on the attacker, as he simultaneously continued to cut his gun across the groin of another man trying to kick at his neck.

The scissoring action, with the combined force of both his bolstered leg muscles, clamped on an unfortunate attacker, compressing his hips and abdomen to but a few inches, and the pain was so great it burst a thousand blood vessels across his brain. The man’s continued machine gun-fire went wild now, hitting his colleagues, the ground, and wheeling off into the air to join the expanding debris, bullets, limbs and broken bodies of the Russian troops coming from the epicenter of the gale-force conflict.

As his subconscious wrestled with inhuman speed, slicing, kicking, firing, and killing, a part of him respected the bravery of his assailants. A part of him noted their unrelenting attack in the face of terrible retribution. And a part of him noted, as they finally brought down his friend, that this was a fight he would not win.

He inflicted a terrible toll on them, he pulled them limb from limb, but as their numbers fell, his own systems fell as well. As the munition tube to his flechette gun was ripped free his tactical AI registered the loss as a rapid fall in his options. They had him by two limbs now, his torn left leg and his right arm, and though he still kicked and punched at them, they finally had him pinned. He felt the muzzles of their guns being pressed against his neck as they held him, and he opened his faceplate.

He was done. Faced with his admittance of defeat, they felt some measure of the same respect for him as he did for them. Not pity, and certainly not mercy. But respect. Their friends lay dead and maimed all around. The ground was slick with blood, the air full of screams. They aimed their guns at his face, and he looked at the sky.

- - -

Ayala, Neal, and Quavoce had been joined in cyberspace by Jack, Madeline and John, and they watched as the remaining twenty Russian shock troops executed the last of Ben’s team. They were looking into his eyes as he stared skyward, resigned and exhausted.

They did not speak. They watched in silence as the view slipped to the chase still going on a mile away. They could not know it was Ben running, just as he could not know he was alone now. They could not know his intentions. They could only see the swath of destruction that followed hot on his tail. And they could see the futility of his flight.

He ran, hoping he was giving the last two members of his team a fighting chance. And indeed they had made their assailants pay a hefty butcher’s bill. But he was alone now. Hunted by a relentless killer.

He knew the gully was ahead. He knew he would not make it across in time.

Ayala, Neal, and their friends watched as he leapt, spinning in midair to look skyward and zeroing in on the satellite his systems had calculated was above. As he found his target he lasered a signal directly into its lens far above. The signal contained a data packet that confirmed what they already suspected. It relayed, perhaps, some finer detail of the true militant capability of the foe they faced, and it told them what Quavoce had already surmised.

In an otherwise subspace silent world it was possible to triangulate a subspace signal. You needed two subspace-capable units, and you needed your target to be broadcasting. The Russian Ubitsyas had used their own technological advantages against them. Ayala did not watch as the final Ubitsya caught Ben in midair. She closed her mind’s eye to the view as he turned to dust in the whirlwind of its weapons fire. Ben had been a good friend, and one of her best commanders.

With solemn gravitas, she said to the gathered group:

Ayala:
‘i have more to report. minnie was smart enough to notify the other teams as soon as the attack began. thank you for that, minnie. that said i am afraid to say we were too late to help team 3 either, they were blitzed at the same time ben’s team was, and i am afraid they did not exact nearly as much damage on their attackers as his spezialists were able to.’

She paused as she got her emotions under control, turning her fury down to a simmer by force of will.

Ayala:
‘as of last comm. team 2 remains undiscovered, though. satellite tracking confirms that though there are two russian fighters in their vicinity no hostilities have commenced, and they have gone comms silent. hopefully they can evade their attackers.’

Neal:
‘¿i assume we can still talk to them, even though they cannot reply?’

Minnie:

Barrett:
‘¿are we absolutely certain that we do not risk their discovery by continuing to send information? i do not want to risk losing even more men today than we already have.’

Quavoce:
‘when not transmitting, the subspace tweeter is a completely passive device. we can transmit as much data as we desire to it and they will still be able to hear us without revealing their location. but they cannot reply, and, of course, they cannot use their suit-to-suit comms either.’

Neal:
‘very well. that we can still talk
to
them is some small consolation. minnie, please configure an ai to begin a running track of all force dispositions in their area. as best we can, i want to keep track of their movements, and supply them with as much intel as we can on activity in their vicinity.’

Minnie:

They all tensed. Was Recon Team 2 already under attack?

But it was a greater threat even than that.

Minnie:

It was happening. The attacks on the Recon Teams had been the first step in the greater invasion.

Minnie:

Neal:
‘ok, that changes things even more. minnie, send new orders to recon team 2.’

Ayala:
‘neal, you can’t send them into that, they’ll be ripped apart.’

Neal:
‘no, ayala, i have no intention of sending them back to do force recon. that is all moot now. we know they have mobiliei tech, we know its limitations, but we also know they have a good deal of it, enough to blanket three separate teams of our best equipped soldiers. no, the invasion of the crimea is a reality now. we will see that on the news, not through eyes of a recon team. i need recon 2 somewhere else.’

The team waited, and Neal did not disappoint.

Neal:
‘minnie, determine a lowest exposure route for recon 2 heading east. it is time we knew who is pulling the strings. and i want to know where the hell they are making those goddamn planes. i want hektor and his team to head toward moscow, now.’

Neal at Minnie:
‘and while you are at it, minnie, get me the uk prime minister, german chancellor, and french president on the line. whichever you can get hold of first. i think i need to talk to them.’

Chapter 36: On the Brinkmanship

The scene across Eastern Europe was a tempest of unrest. Watched by the world, the
ancient nations of Poland, Hungary, Romania, and the Czech Republic were up in arms. Riots and demonstrations rocked the ancient plazas and cobbled streets of Warsaw and Bucharest. They had seen life under the Soviet Bloc before, and had no intention of falling under such rule again.

In Ukraine and Belarus, the countryside was divided. Ethnic Russians were running roughshod over shaky democratic institutions, while governments tried to enforce a measure of rule against a wave of propaganda, demagoguery and violence.

Neal sat in a wide conference room in Luxembourg, high in the walls of the old city, sitting as it did above the broad moat that surrounded the entire citadel. Its peaceful reputation as a center of diplomacy in recent centuries had been a luxury of the impregnable fortress that was its cliff-bound capital. Nowadays, though, it provided more of a fiscal shelter than a physical one, and today it would be the site for a meeting of European powers, a group under siege of a very different but no less lethal kind.

The first to join Neal was the French president, an early and determined supporter of Neal’s cause, not least of which because of the damage the late Agent Merard had done to the sanctity of his military institutions. He did not stand on ceremony, and he did not bring with him an entourage, such was the nature of his growing friendship with the American scientist.

Almost before he had finished shaking hands with Neal, he was speaking, his lilting French translated briskly and efficiently by the ever more multilingual Minnie, and transmitted directly into Neal’s sub-cortex via the mobile node he now wore more often than not on his spinal interface.

“Monsieur Danielson, I would say it is a pleasure to see you, but I am afraid our relationship has been forced to grow in very bad soil,” said the president, the colloquialism bringing a wry smile to Neal’s face.

Neal used a new technique in order to reply, thinking the words in English, and allowing Minnie to translate and manage his vocal responses directly, so a fluent, if halting, French escaped his lips. It was a profoundly disquieting sensation, made bearable only by the look of surprise and eminent respect it brought to the eyes of the French leader.

“Monsieur le President, it is sad I agree, but I am thankful nonetheless that it has offered us this opportunity to work together toward achieving our common goals.”

The Frenchman bowed his head ever so slightly, a mark of respect and appreciation for what he perceived as Neal’s efforts to learn his mother tongue. Neal would not disabuse him of this misinterpretation, and further conversation was halted anyway by the door opening once more. The German chancellor and British prime minister were announced.

The four greeted each other like the dignitaries they were, with the rare informality that was reserved for other heads of state and the few citizens that could count themselves among the same upper echelons of power.

“Thank you again for coming, all of you,” said Neal, first in German, then again in French. He winked at the British prime minister. They had met enough times that he need not worry about a token English greeting for the man.

“We have much to discuss, my friends, I have brought with me earpieces for you all, they will aid in easy communication amongst this small group, and eliminate the need for a larger entourage of interpreters.” Again, he repeated the line in French and German, as he handed them all small, transparent earplugs with tiny tubes mounted to their sides. As they both studied them briefly, Minnie was already assigning them to the appropriate language based on their holders.

The German was the first to place the small plug in her ear, feeling the thrum of its tiny subspace tweeter, she mistook it for a bass hum, and so was pleasantly surprised when she was greeted by a pleasant feminine voice once it was in place.

In perfectly lilted German, something Minnie’s AM Parent Birgit had given her from birth, Minnie said, “Good afternoon, Chancellor, I will be you translator, Wilhelmina.”

The chancellor seemed surprised to be greeted so, and looked around, only to see the same wide-eyed look on her counterparts’ faces.

“No need to be alarmed, my friends,” said Neal placatingly, his voice echoed in their ears, “that is only my communications team, they will be giving us comms support, as well as answering any data related questions we may have during our discussion.”

It was the first time for most of them that they would have a conversation with a machine, and Neal did not feel the need to burden them with the details of Minnie’s less than natural birth only a couple of months beforehand, or the extensive processing capacity by which she was able to speak to all three of them, in three different languages, at the same time.

“Now, to business. Let us talk of the Crimean Peninsula, shall we?”

Stern looks crossed all their faces, and they did, indeed, not waste time with pleasantries. They had vitally important matters to discuss, and no audience to pander to. Without further ado, they got right to the most important topic on everyone’s minds.

- - -

“Of course, Prime Minister, I hear you, but surely we must fear this is not the end of their advance?” said the chancellor.

“I don’t suggest it is,” replied the British man, “but it is also not anything close to a full scale invasion. They have stopped at Melitopol and Armyans’k, and, to date, we have no evidence that they are not being welcomed with open arms there.”

The chancellor scoffed at this, but the French president spoke more diplomatically, “If I may, Prime Minister, we had no such evidence during the fall of the Stannic Bloc, or even back in Islamabad. Surely you see that we must hold our information sources on the other side of the Steel Curtain in some … skepticism.”

Neal, of course had less spurious information sources, and as the conversation slogged on, he was starting to see that he would have to reveal them soon. What he was seeing was not pragmatism, and not even fear, but inertia. He had gotten their support for his work because its very secrecy removed the need to garner public support. Now the opposite was true, and he feared they needed to be reminded of the scale of the threat they were facing.

“If I may,” Neal said politely, “we do have
some
data that we can rely on from inside the New Federation.”

They were understandably curious, and the room’s attention moved to him.

“As you know, my taskforce has access to some … new technologies, given to us by our allies in the greater task at hand.” It was shockingly easy for them to forget what they had all learned in the aftermath of the missile conflagration five months ago.

His discreet reminder brought it back to them, and he went on, “While I am aware that there have been many attempts to place intelligence assets inside Russia since the coup, we were able to utilize said technology to get further than most.”

The German and English leaders went to interject, clearly disturbed that they had not been informed sooner, but Neal glossed over their indignation with news of his own teams’ eventual discovery.

“I would love to tell you they were able to move with impunity once behind Russian territory, but unfortunately they had a far from easy time once over the border. I will not belabor you with details, though I will provide you with full reports,” he was already pinging Minnie to create them. He longed for the ability to send them directly to the minds of the three world leaders, but sufficed himself with having Minnie send it to three iPads he had brought along just in case he needed them. Such blunt tools, he thought, compared to the real thing.

As the data flowed to the tablets, Neal reached down, still speaking as he pulled them from his bag and handed them out. “What I
will
stress, however, is that while we were there, I am afraid to say we encountered teams with some measure of the same technology we possess.”

They were initially confused by this statement, then the French premier voiced the conclusion Neal was leading them to, “The Russian Agent, Mr. Hunt’s counterpart.”

“Yes, Mr. President,” said Neal, as they all sat back, stunned, “he would seem to be very much alive, and very much behind the resurgence of the Russian Empire, as we had assumed. It would appear he has also enabled some small section of Russian special forces with a less advanced, but still very potent version of our own combat armor, or battleskin, and that he also has some air units. Not as large as our StratoJets, but capable nonetheless. We do not yet know the scale of these forces, but we are attempting to ascertain that now, along with location of their source.”

“This new information is very troubling,” said the chancellor, clearly rethinking her initial position on the topic. “Standing against the already advanced Russian Army and Air Force had been a formidable challenge already. This new factor … I don’t know …” her voice trailed off.

Neal was disconcerted. The chancellor had been the voice of reason, the only one truly calling them to arms, to respond with force, as they must. But his play to support her had instead served to soften even her resolve.

“No, Chancellor, please, you misunderstand. I came here to tell you that this army is indeed a great threat, but that if you study the full data we managed to compile during our reconnaissance mission, all indicators point to this being a very small part of the greater Russian force.”

He looked at them each in turn, “Chancellor, Prime Minister, Mr. President, I have come here to tell you that you indeed face a terrible threat. But I mean this not just to frighten you, but to galvanize you. You must stand firm against the Russians. You must show them that you will not tolerate further incursion.

“We must hold them here, and avoid further conflict until we can complete the next stage of our defense construction.”

They looked at him.

The Frenchman spoke, “Next stage, Dr. Danielson?”

“Yes, Monsieur le President, the next stage. As you all know, we have been working hard to build up the Terminus One and, of course, to build and launch New Moon One. While we have built a basic complement of StratoJets and ground-based forces, we have not been able to work on anything more potent until we had completed the elevator.”

“More potent?” said the prime minister. “I assume by the looks on my colleagues’ faces that they have also not been made aware of any new military capability you were working on.”

Neal really had not wanted to say that. He cursed quietly, and Minnie queried his anger. Neal did not respond to her. This was not going as planned. He was not a happy camper.

“Prime Minister,” he said, trying to seem calm, “when I talk of a more potent weapon, I am talking of the larger defense systems we are going to need to build, as we have discussed many times. While these are mostly limited by design to space, some of them will have application here on Earth, and it is the first of those that we are hoping to complete in the next couple of months.”

“I think I speak for everyone when I say I would like to know more about these … ‘systems,’ Dr. Danielson.” said the chancellor, almost threateningly.

“Of course, of course, Chancellor, I will share the designs immediately, though they are outside even our advanced capabilities for a while longer. And it is just that delay that concerns me. Until we have these tools at our disposal, we remain exposed to the threat of the Russian forces even now amassing in Eastern Ukraine.”

At the mention of the Russian forces, their attention naturally moved back to the analysis on their iPads, and Neal concealed a sigh of relief.

Focusing on the photographs from Recon One’s demise, the French leader said, “What am I seeing here?”

He was pointing to a picture of Ben’s final two team members coming to grips with their assailants.

“What you are seeing there, Prime Minister, is forty-four Russian assault troops assailing two of my Spezialists,” said Neal, sadly, but with an appropriate amount of pride in his two men. “The Russians won out, but my men took out more than half the Russian troopers and one of their attack planes in the process.”

They all thought for a moment.

“So,” said the chancellor, seeming to gather herself, “if what you say is true here, we already have the military advantage, Doctor. Why would we not deploy our greater weaponry in force against them and deal with this now?”

The French and British leaders both nodded emphatically, and Neal began to become flustered once more, “No, no, please, you misunderstand me. While I could certainly support a ground offensive with my limited, but admittedly very capable, shock troops, in order to engage the Russians properly would require a force redeployment of my StratoJet fleet away from Rolas. Until we have completed our next level of construction, defending the SpacePort must remain my top priority.”

The Frenchman surprised Neal by becoming suddenly indignant, “Neal, my friend, I am afraid I must call something to your attention. Please forgive me but you repeatedly talk of
your
forces, may I remind you that the StratoJets you speak of were made using funds from us.
Your
taskforce,
your
Terrestrial Allied Space Command, as you call it, is, in truth, a
NATO
force. I think, perhaps, that we should start to refer to it as such.”