Condition Zero, page 13
part #6 of The Earth Saga Series
Another red light flashed inside his HUD. His pod was racing downwards from ten-thousand feet, and the fire coming up from the surface was intensifying and getting closer. His pod’s AI concluded that it was a combination of 40mm high explosive shells and energy weapons fire.
With the intensity of the threat now evident, the pods networked a plan rapidly, developing a course of action that didn’t involve continuing down on their current trajectory. Within seconds, all fifteen drop-pods altered their course and increased speed. The AI had determined that the threat was sufficient to send the pods racing towards the north shore of Amsterdam Island at the swiftest speed possible.
“We’re going into the drink.” Jensen said over the net. “When you hit the beach, set a perimeter, then prepare to assault the objective.” He killed the channel. The rest of the team was getting the same information fed to their HUDs as he was.
Watching the altimeter tick down, Jensen waited for the rapid deceleration that was due to come. The augmentation that his body had undergone allowed him to take a massive amount of G-force, allowing the pod to wait until the last minute before slowing.
Checking the data being fed to him, Jensen could tell that he must have dropped below the arch of fire that the anti-air batteries could engage under. The guns had been emplaced on the highest point of the island, next to their target, and for whatever reason, they could only engage targets above them, or at high altitude. Sloppy.
“One hundred metres.” The armour’s AI said softly.
The braking rockets fired almost immediately. The sudden increase of G-force on Jensen’s body would have killed a normal human, but his augmentation kept him alive, with only a slight feeling of heaviness in his chest.
The jets fired just fifty metres from the top of the waves that were gently rolling back and forth off the north shore of the Amsterdam Island, allowing the pod to hit the water well within safety margins.
60-Support Team
“I always wanted to visit the South Pacific.” William Rita said over the comms net, a sense of gaiety in his voice.
Captain Zhou Lee was stone-faced inside his drop pod. He might have been the commander of the support team, and one of only four officers in the Terran Strike Group, but he was one of the only members of the TSG not to have seen combat before. He wasn’t scared. Too many years of indoctrination and training as a former detachment commander of the People’s Liberation Army’s elite Beijing Military Region’s Oriental Sword unit meant he was among the best and brightest his country had to offer.
Growing up in Zhangjiajie, Zhou had excelled in everything as a child. He was a gifted student in sports, music and mathematics. His father was a member of the Communist party and sent his son to all the correct schools on a track that would lead him to the pinnacle of leadership in China. Only a technical failure on a HALO jump into the Temple of Heaven in Beijing had derailed his ascendency to the highest levels of the Chinese government.
The irony was that now, a member of the Terran Strike Group, he had more firepower at his beck and call than anyone in the history of the Peoples Liberation Army. All he needed to do was call for a strike from orbit, and lethal fire would rain down on their target, Alejandro Selkirk Island. That was assuming that the shielding around the planet was down.
Checking the altimeter, Zhou watched it tick down. He still had time until he hit the surface. It gave him time to rethink the plan he had formulated and pitched to Majors Tattersall and Jefferson. Land on the islands northeast corner, and make an assault using the natural terrain as cover and get close enough to the tower to get a clean shot at the Nexus Drive, and thus destroying the shielding that was surrounding the planet. It wasn’t an elaborate plan, but several variables were still unknown, like what kind of defences were in place at the structure.
A red light flashed on his HUD.
Missile Alert! Missile Alert!
Nothing Zhou or the other members of his Support Team could do. The drop pods were automated all the way to the ground, and while he couldn’t feel anything from inside his cocoon, he could see from his HUDs mapping system that his pod and all the other pods were shifting course. That was not ideal. Alejandro Selkirk Island had some rugged terrain on it, and if his operators were dispersed over the entire island, it would delay an assault on the enemy target.
Unfortunately, that was precisely what was happening. The evasive actions of the drop pods scattered them, sending them to the four corners of the island, but they were all going to arrive alive, whatever surface to air missiles had been emplaced on the island had missed.
Getting on the comms, Zhou issues his final instructions.
“When you hit the surface, assault the enemy position at best speed, do not hesitate.”
The line went dead and was quickly replaced by static. Zhou ran a functions check on his gear, everything was working. Must have been a jamming signal from the surface.
At six-hundred metres above the planet’s surface, the retro-rockets fired, belching out a roar of flame and heat as the drop pod slowed from its entry speed, then completed its landing sequence, touching down just past two in the afternoon.
The hatch on the pod opened to reveal a lush green, rugged landscape. Zhou took one step from the pod, then knelt down, scanning to his front with his weapon. He knew the island well enough by memory to know that he was on the eastern edge, and at the end of a massive valley that ran across the island.
Checking his team trackers, he couldn’t get a fix on any of his teammates. Shaking his head, Zhou looked towards the highest point on the island. He could just make out a blue glow from its independent shield. He had a target, he had weapons. Time to get to the task at hand.
61-Iceland
The 4x4 was tearing across the flatlands of southern Iceland. The journey on Route 1 was just over two-hundred and seventy miles, and Anna wasn’t taking any chances with her speed. She had the throttle wide open. She wasn’t sure when Broddi had said the ship was going to leave Jokularlon, but she knew that arriving sooner rather than later was ideal.
As the quad-bike tore along Route 1, with the black sands of the southern coast stretching all the way towards the cold north Atlantic to her south, only one thought consumed her mind, that of her son, and his future. She might have lost half her family in the recent weeks, but she was going to do whatever it took to protect Thor.
62-Maputo
They hadn’t driven for more than two minutes before Nyussi slammed on the breaks outside the Club Maritimo. The large German automobile skidding to a halt, rocking its passengers lightly.
Shakil could see why the Lieutenant Colonel had stopped. In front of them was a group of eight policemen. They looked haggard. Their uniforms were unkept, and they were all without their caps.
“Shakil.” Nyussi pulled his Rock Island .45 pistol out of his holster, racking the upper receiver back just far enough to check that a round was chambered. “I’m going to talk with these men. Whatever happens, don’t leave the vehicle.” Nyussi pulled the hammer back on the pistol and flipped the safety off.
Shakil looked at Nyussi, then out towards the eight men standing in the middle of the road. “But there are eight of them.” He said dryly.
Nyussi smiled, bringing up his pistol for Shakil to see. “Yes, there are.”
The Lieutenant Colonel pushed the door of the car open, letting in a wave of hot air, before slipping out and onto the paved street.
Closing the door firmly, Nyussi kept his pistol in a relaxed grip in his right hand by his hip. Stepping to his left once, he made sure that there was a metre between him and the vehicle, then directed his attention to the eight men that were facing him. They were just under twenty metres away, all armed, but none of them was pointing a weapon at him yet.
“Give us your vehicle!” One of the policemen shouted.
Nyussi looked back to the car. He could see Shakil sitting on the front passenger seat. He had a look of fear on his face.
“You can’t fit eight people inside this car.” Nyussi shouted back at the man.
“Fuck you. Get the kid out of there.” The policeman retorted. “We’re taking it.”
Nyussi didn’t hesitate.
He dropped his shoulders and brought the pistol up simultaneously, making himself a smaller target, and creating a stable firing platform. Sweeping rapidly from left to right, Nyussi quickly fired off his eight rounds, each one punching a fist-sized hole through the eight policemen that were stood across from him.
A roar of shots from the cops was fired haphazardly in return as they dropped to the ground. The bullets slamming into the road or flying off into the distance.
When the shooting stopped, the only sound was the hum of the engine of the Mercedes.
Shakil barely had time to register what he saw. He had been surrounded by death since the fall of the government, and he had seen dead bodies, but he had never seen anyone killed in front of him, and the way Nyussi had coldly dispatched the policemen left him stunned.
Shakil watched as Nyussi dropped the empty clip from his pistol, slipping another one in, then moving forward to check his marksmanship, before returning to the car. Sitting back in the driver's seat, he looked over at Shakil.
“Let’s get going.”
He put the car in drive and started to roll forward, north, towards Zavala.
63-Blue Team
Master Sergeant Santini of Providence Rhode Island was on the ground and moving fast. His family had a long history of service in the US Army, a tradition he continued after high school by enlisting into the infantry. An IED in Afghanistan had taken one of his legs and vision, but now, in the heartland of America, Master Sergeant Santini was racing furiously towards the Barrier Generator shielding abreast with the other fourteen members of Blue Team.
Santini loved wearing the power-armour they had been given. He felt like he could take on the world by himself in the red, white and blue armour. Some of the non-American members of Blue Team had rolled their eyes when he had proposed the colour combination, but they acquiesced. If he was going to return to Earth after a four-month absence to fight, he knew he was going to wear his flag on his armour.
When Santini reached the glowing blue shielding that was in front of him, he charged straight through it. Kol Fine had told them that the shielding would only keep out energy blasts, allowing him and the rest of the team to pierce the cloak surrounding the barrier generator, and close down with the enemy and start the hard work.
64-Red Team
Major Nikita Pullinski hated jungles. He had hated them when he was sent for training in Vietnam as a young member of Speznatz, and now, all these years later, crouched down in the jungles of Myanmar, he hated them just as much. The jungle was pitch black. The light from the moon overhead barely penetrated the thick canopy that his drop-pod had smashed its way through. It was almost midnight, and no sensible creature other than predators were on the move.
Nikita waited until he received ready signals from the fourteen other members of his team before he sent them off on their attack run. The plan was simple, get to the Nexus Drive that was part of the barrier generator network and destroy it as quickly as possible. The drop had put them within a kilometre of the tower, something that he had raised in the pre-mission briefings as a highly risky move, but Kol Fine had reminded him that this was about speed. All other considerations were shelved.
“File on me.” He ordered over the net. “Movement to contact.” Nikita glanced at his HUD and waited until his team was ready. “Moving.” He started off as fast as he could. His fourteen men were spread over almost two hundred metres of the jungle. If he took contact from the front, he’d be on his own for some time before the rest of the team could get online and give him support.
Moving through the lush terrain, Nikita checked his elevation. He was going up. He knew that the Nexus Drive was at the top of the ridge just north of the town of Mogok and the Valley of the Rubies. From the imagery that Colonel Hunt had supplied, he knew that the town was intact and that there was a massive mining pit at the bottom of the reverse slope. Priority number one was destroying the tower, and after that, an attack on the mine was considered a target of opportunity.
Twenty minutes of movement was all it took for Nikita to see the first signs of the tower. It was silver/grey in colour and towered into the air, but there was something about the entire scene that seemed off. There was supposed to be energy shielding around the tower, but one wasn’t visible.
Nikita’s mind was racing. Was he too late? Had the Blue Team already accomplished its mission, was the fight over? Impossible. They had just landed.
“Assault forward.” He ordered and doubled his speed. If the tower was undefended, now was the time to strike. No hesitation was allowed. The advantage must be seized.
Fifty metres from the tower, the jungle cleared. Cut back, leaving a decimated wasteland of decapitated trees. Looking to his right, Nikita could see the village of Mogok running down the spine of the ridge. Smoke and the sound of gunfire was coming from the town, but he refocused his attention on the tower.
The base was burrowed into the ground, while four cables had been anchored equidistance from the structure to provide support. Everything looked like the diagrams he had seen before launch, the only thing that was missing other than the shielding was the security force.
“Set a perimeter.” Nikita ordered. “Demo team up.”
He dropped to one knee and scanned away from the tower. Where was the security force? He had read a report that estimated that there were at least one-hundred troops stationed at the tower and a considerable amount of mecha. Instead, there was nothing. Part of him was disappointed. He had anticipated a fight.
“Demo set!” Garcia shouted, the one Spaniard on his team and demolitions expert.
“Assault forward!” Nikita ordered. He wanted to be in an elevated position over the mine that the Coalition had dug and the landing pad for transports and ready to attack when the demo charges went.
He waited until the other members of his team were clear of the blast zone that was clearly marked on his HUD, then gave the order to Garcia.
Using his rear-facing camera, he watched the charges detonate around the base of the tower like a set of dominos tipping over. One, then the next until all twelve charges had gone off, then a final thirteenth charge, the kicker, placed slightly higher up the tower blew, pushing the tower northwards, into the jungle they had just emerged from.
The explosions themselves weren’t loud, but when the tower crashed through the jungle canopy, it made a hell of a racket, and that was when Nikita noticed that the gun-fire in the village of Mogok stop.
“Firing line on me.” He ordered coolly and turned to a position where he was facing the village that was just over a kilometre away.
Nikita and his team were in a position that overlooked a massive mining pit to the east, with the village of Mogok was south-west of them. From the clearing they were in, he had a clear line of sight towards the village. Using his helmets advanced optics, Nikita focused on the few first structures but saw nothing out of the ordinary, but at the first cluster of buildings, he spotted what he was looking for, a red armour wearing soldier.
“Enemy infantry.” Wood called out.
“Seen.” Nikita responded. “King, launch your drone.”
“On it.”
It didn’t take long for the mini-drone that was attached to King’s armour to detach and zoom off towards the village. The feed from the small aviation unit was sent directly to all the team members HUDs.
“Wide sweep.” Nikita ordered. “Stay above one-hundred.”
The little machine reacted effortlessly to King’s control. Within less than two minutes, the entire Red Team had a picture of the battlefield that lay in front of them.
“Looks like these fuckers decided to wipe-out the locals.” Ross said.
“I’m shocked the locals were still here.” Cook replied.
“Enough talk.” Nikita said. “Movement to contact. Visser, take Wright and Davis and flank to the north. Evans, Brown, Durand, flank south. Garcia, Wood, King in reserve. Everyone else on me.”
“Shouldn’t we contact higher?” Visser asked. The Dutchman was Nikita’s second in command, a reliable, by the book operator.
“I’m not in the practice of asking for permission to kill the enemy. Fuck higher.” Nikita responded. “We’re going down there to kill them.”
“Roger.” Visser replied. “My team, on me.”
“On me.” Brown ordered.
“Garcia, Wood, King.” I want you one hundred metres to my rear, ready to respond to any emerging threat.” Nikita ordered. “Let’s go.”
Nikita rose to his feet in his jungle camouflaged armour which had just the slightest red highlights to the helmet. He wanted to be tactical, but he also wanted the slightest hint of flare. Bending over slightly, Nikita brought his rifle up until it was almost level with the ground, then started moving forward. As far as he was concerned, contact from the enemy could come at any time, and now that hostile troops had noticed their tower had been destroyed, they would know that Alliance forces were on the surface.
As Nikita moved forward, he was constantly checking the position of the five other men that were part of his team that was advancing directly towards the village on his HUD. He could see that Visser and Evans had their teams moving to their positions swiftly, and now it was just a question of who was going to take the first shot, his team or the enemy infantry.
