Chapter Fifty-Seven – Hit Everything, Everywhere, All At Once

Chapter Fifty-Seven – Hit Everything, Everywhere, All At Once

“Mortar fire isn’t great against heavily wooded areas. Not for the first round.

Once the forest is burned down, it’s a perfectly viable tool.”

–Sergeant O’Mally, 1978

***

The moment after the artillery strike landed, the LT. called for his guys to spread out, watch for enemies, and open fire on anything shooting our way.

“Mortar teams need coordinates for the enemy artillery,” Moreau said over the line. He was surprisingly calm, all things considered.

“We have mortar teams?” I asked.

“Two of the trucks have roof-mounted mortars,” Gomorrah explained. “If you spot something, let us know.”

“Got it,” I said as I climbed back to my feet. The forest was lighting up as the soldiers behind me gave up on going full infra-red and switched on helmet-mounted lights and little flashlights clipped onto their rifles.

The light, motion, and sudden sound, didn’t go unnoticed. I started to see motion through the forest in the opposite direction. It wasn’t time for me to be laying my ass down on the ground and waiting, so I rose up, brought my rifle to bear, and started to move sideways.

I trusted that the soldiers behind us were pretty decent, but I didn’t want to be in the crossfire anyway. My armour was good, but I wasn’t sure if it was ‘point blank armour-piercing rifle round’ good. Hell, even if it was, that shit probably hurt.

I was still moving to the side when I noticed some aliens skulking through the underbrush. Small forms, their bodies a deep brown, with a darker green carapace that was moulted and patterned not too differently from some of the pine trees and spikier bushes around.

If they had been standing stock still, I might have missed them, but their movement gave them away.

I squinted, then raised my gun and took a few quick shots.

Silenced rounds, delivered from an invisible person, the slight flash hidden by the trees. The aliens had no idea what hit them. A few missed shots kicked up dirt, or dug into some of the trees, but most of them… some of them, found their way into alien flesh and they went down.

“Just model threes here so far,” I said.

“Likely the early warning models they have on the periphery of the hive,” Gomorrah said. “We can expect a lot more resistance if we move inwards.”

“Yeah, sounds about right. I’m seeing a few threads hanging around too,” I said. They were damned hard to notice, with how thin and semi-transparent they were. It was only when the light from the soldiers caught them just right that I spotted the lines.

“Try not to walk into them,” Moreau said. “They’ll alert the model seventeen of your location, and the next thing you know another bio-bomb will go off right where you’re standing.”

“Right,” I said. “Can I use the lines to trace back where the seventeen is hiding? I’d like to put an end to it if it’s going to be coordinating things for the bastards.”

There is a relatively inexpensive non-catalogued item that should allow you to do just that. You’ll need to find a piece of the biological wiring that’s properly connected to the network and then touch it with the device.

“LT, can I have two minutes before you move up?” I asked. “Just hold your spot, I’ll be trying something.”

“Affirmative. Stray Cat.”

I nodded at that, then ran into cover. “What’s this thing?” I asked Myalis. “And how’s it work?”

It’s a disposable frequency tapping device. It connects to a model seventeen’s network, copies the current signal going through it, then relays it once again. Most of the time the antithesis ignores the additional signal. I won’t go into the math involved, but the oscillation allows the device to pinpoint the location of the model of origin. The device costs ten points.

About as much as a single cheaper grenade? Hell, I’d made three times that just now gunning down a few randoms. “Yeah, I’ll take one,” I said.

The device was a small black thing, about the size of one of those old tv remotes, with a pair of metallic pincer-shaped arms sticking out of the top. There was only one button on it, and a curious press made the pinches snip closed then open again. Kind of idiot-proof.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

I knelt down behind a bush, then found one of the wires on the ground. I had to be quick, there was noise deeper in the forest. The hive was coming awake fully, and it didn’t sound happy about our intrusion.

Pinching one of those thin wires with the device, I waited for just a second before Myalis updated my HUD.