On Distant Shores (Exiles Triology Book 1) (35 page)

Matki Awrani’s prediction came true all too soon.  As the team stood guard, they worked with the AI on their suits to identify threats.  The mech AI was identifying anything that might meet the danger threshold.  As the large herd animals came through, eating vegetation, the picture would flash to a secondary laptop that was monitored by Lenny Reitch.  Matki Awrani and Lenny Reitch were becoming fast friends.  Every time a new creature came into view, Matki Awrani would look at the beast, and give a thumbs up or down, and the beast would be tagged accordingly.  Now the AI was doing most of the threat analysis.

              Rob was on duty when the first large threat showed up.  The overhead for the valley zoomed to a large size on his display, and blinked red, as the threat entered the valley.  Rob kicked up his radio and PA system for broadcast, “All personnel, this is not a drill, possible hostile incoming.  I say again, possible hostile incoming.”

              As the threat moved, the AI painted the view of the valley floor with a green dot where the facility was located.  There was a red square imposed around the body of the threat, with a kilometer count down of how far away the threat was.  Right now it was tracking eighteen kilometers out.

              Mike spoke next on the radio, “All team personnel, all team personnel, move to mech and suit up.  I say again, this is not a drill, all team personnel, move to mech and suit up.  Lieutenant Pang, Over.”

              Mike and his team sprinted to the mech armor.  They swarmed up the sides of the armor and tucked their personal weapons into the storage area.  The opaque helmets went on their heads, switches were hit, and the inside lit up so that they could see the display on the inside of the helmet.  Four doors on the back of the mech armor closedsmoothly as the team suited up for battle.

              Mike keyed his mike again, “Lieutenant Pang, are you there, over?”

              Jondreau replied instead, “Mike, Lieutenant Pang is in her sleep cycle.  What do you need? Over.”

              Mike responded, “Lieutenant Jondreau, I need your security team up to back up my team.  We have a hostile inbound.  I need all security personnel to man weapons.  Over.”

              Jondreau replied, “Roger Mike, I’m sending up reinforcements now.  I’m going to wake up all personnel to ensure that the backups for security are in place.”

              Mike finished the conversation, “Roger, out.”

              Mike called for a team SITREP.  Everett started the chorus of “Mech 2, Green, Green, Green,” as ammunition, his physical condition, and physical condition of the armor was relayed to Mike.  This was repeated three more times as the rest of the team sounded off with the number of their armor and their status.

              Mike finished with, “Roger team this is Mech 1, team leader, and I say Green, Green, Green, ready for deployment.”  It had been a long three days, filled with practice, guard duty, and time spent improving their living conditions.  The team practiced their quick reaction drills, firing up the mech armor, combat drills for the team, combat drills for the security detachment, and combat drills for the techs. 

There was now a team of two techs on standby in the cave at all times to ensure that the mech armor was in peak condition.  They did preventive maintenance checks on the mech armor daily.  This was new ground for the techs.  Mike and his team were used to it, subjected to it for their entire professional military careers.  For every mission, they had pre-mission checks, mission checks, and post mission checks, as well as daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly preventive maintenance checks on their equipment.

              At this point, failure was not an option.  Failure meant that everybody in the facility would die.  Everybody downstairs was now fully on board with Mike’s leadership.  Even Mitchem came around to his way of thinking, though Mike could tell that Mitchem still hated his guts.

              Mitchem lost authority after his precipitous departure from the battle with the bear pack, something that Matki Awrani called talgit.  The security team passed that story, plus the nickname, Ditch ‘em Mitchem, around to everybody in the facility.  There were a lot of military veterans, many of them combat veterans, and their attitude about Mitchem leaving the security team to fend for themselves percolated through the rest of the tech, security, and administration teams.  Murph, the lead security sergeant, was pretty vocal about his opinion of Jamison and Mitchem after the big battle with the talgit.  Jondreau cautioned Murph about his disrespect, but finally gave up as he noticed the shift in attitude among the civilians and airmen around him.

              Jamison had a full on break with reality.  Mike couldn’t stay upset with the guy.  There was definitely something physically wrong with him.  He was found lying in a hallway up on the first floor, and was having major problems with his motor skills.  His body seemed to be failing him.  Major Nosstrand and Dr. Humphreys were taking care of him, but they couldn’t diagnose his condition.  Jamison was on one of the cots in the play room.  Periodically he would start yelling, and then they would give him some meds to knock him out.  The doctors didn’t know if it was physiological or psychological.  They were beginning to lean towards physiological.  They thought he may have had a stroke.

              Mike tracked the threat.  The beast was not tracking directly towards them.  That didn’t decrease Mike’s anxiety, however.

              “What do you think?” Everett asked.

              “It is just one threat, and as long as it remains just one threat, I don’t think we’ll have a problem,” Mike replied.  “I was able to stop one of them with just one set of mech armor, so I don’t anticipate too much of a problem with it.”

              Mickey spoke up, “don’t jinx us boss.  If you say something like that, you’re just pissing off Murphy.”  Mickey meant Murphy, of Murphy’s Law, not Murphy, security.

              Sure enough, right after Mickey said that about Murphy, their head’s-up displays started blinking red again as two more hostile squares appeared on the map of the valley.

              The entire team started cursing.

              “Jesus Mike, what were you thinking?  You went and pissed off Murphy.”

              Everett was poking fun at Mike.  Every soldier was a little bit superstitious.   The team realized that eventually, they would probably have to contend with multiple targets.  They felt it was inevitable.  They were fully prepared for this scenario.  They had been practicing for such an eventuality, and they felt comfortable with their mechs.  The AIs in the suit were becoming more focused and able to allow the team to do things in their armor that would have been impossible just five days ago.  Mickey had been doing karate katas to explore the range of movement.  Mike and his team had been practicing gymnastic moves as well, such as barrel rolls.

              The hostiles moved closer to the facility.

              Mike gave the orders, “Okay, team, light up your camouflage.”

              The camouflage capability was a wonder to Mike, and it would have been totally impossible without the AI, the quantum computer, and the carbon fiber electronics cables that the electrical system in the mech armor was wired with.  The entire mech was dotted with camera lenses.  This allowed three things.  First was the head’s up display that showed everything in the area around the mech, to give the men in the mech three hundred and sixty degrees of situational awareness.  They could see everything around them, up and down.  Second, the full body construction, with no windows to weaken the integrity of the armor, ensured that the body of the suit possessed no weak points that could be exploited.  No windows meant a stray shot couldn’t compromise the integrity of the armor.  No windows meant a laser couldn’t penetrate to kill or blind the soldier inside.  Third, and this was the thing that Mike thought was amazing, was that it allowed the mech armor to display an adaptive pattern of camouflage on its exterior.

              The cameras filmed the area around it, and the armor, with the help of an adaptive electric capability, using pixels on the body of the armor, was able to display the area directly behind the armor onto the face of the armor.  While not completely perfect when the suit was moving, it allowed a near perfect camouflage when the suit was motionless.

              As the camouflage engaged, to the security team and civilians in the cave it looked as if the mech armor had just disappeared.  Joseph and Stein were standing close to each other, and they both muttered, “Awesome,” at the same time.  Other members of security laughed when they heard them say it in unison.

              Mike and his team fanned out in a defensive perimeter.  As they moved, the armor camouflage distorted until it moved back into a stationary position.  Then the hard part began.  They waited.

              The hostiles were identified as dragons.  The first hostile target wandered around the valley.  It was not moving directly towards the cave.  Over time, it driftedcloser to their location.  The other hostiles were moving with more intent.  Each of the secondary hostiles seemed to be moving towards the first target, but they were being wary towards each other.  The secondary targets seemed to be testing each other out.

              Tom spoke up, “Gents, I think I know what is going on with these critters.”

              Mike asked, “What’s that, Tom.”

              “Remember, this is just a theory, but I think the first one is a female, and the other two are males.  You notice that the secondary hostiles seem to be moving around each other, but they’re both definitely moving towards the first target.”

              “Yeah, I see that.”

              “I’ve seen the same kind of thing among rutting males during deer season.”

              “Okay Tom, any pattern to the movement of the first hostile?”

              “Yeah, I think she’s smelling the areas that the previous owner of this valley spent time in, finding the scent patches, and trying to figure out the threat.”

              Mike relied on Tom’s instincts.  He was the master hunter.

              Rob spoke up, “Tom, are you sure that is a theory?  Sounds more like a hypothesis to me.”

              Even in the face of danger, Mike’s crew couldn’t resist ribbing each other.

              “Team Mech leader, this is Security Leader Actual, over.”

              Actual meant that it was Pang talking, the leader of the security team.  Mike had placed Pang in charge of Security.  Jondreau wasn’t too happy about this, but Mike trusted Jen a lot more than he trusted Jondreau.

              “Roger, Sec leader, this is Mech leader, over.”

              “Mike, the security team is in place.”

              The security team had pulled two SAWs, Squad Automatic Weapons, out of storage.  These weapons were previously only used when the security police traveled out to the range.  Now they were employed at the edges of the cave mouth to ensure that nothing slipped past the mech team.  There were no more weapons that were locked away.  Everybody that could be trusted with a weapon had a weapon.  Still, Mike wished they had something with a larger caliber.  The SAWs shot 5.56mm bullets.  He would have preferred the M240B in 7.62mm, or the Browning M2 in .50 caliber.  Hell, even the old M60 in 7.62mm would have been great.  But beggars can’t be choosers.  The SAWs would have to do.

              The first hostile was moving closer.  It was now within 2 kilometers of the cave mouth.  The secondary hostiles moved within a kilometer of the first hostile, though they were still being wary of each other.

              It had been three days since the first dragon was killed.  Since that time, the carcasses had been plundered of all the meat available.  There was nothing there that would attract the notice of a predator now.  This included the carcasses of the grasnigs, and the talgits.  The team pulled the carcasses further away from the cave mouth once they understood how big the scavengers in this new world were.  The average size of the scavengers had plummeted with the decrease in available flesh.  They kept the skulls of the big beasts though.  Bragging rights were bragging rights, no matter what world they were in.

              Now, Mike wasn’t worried about the smell of rotting meat pulling the animals towards them.  There was one problem, though.  The people that Mike and his team were protecting had to defecate and urinate.  That was a powerful smell for any animal, indicating that there was potentially a large presence of prey animals for them to target.

              The first hostile was within a kilometer, and the two other targets were still trailing her within a kilometer.  Mike transmitted over the radio, “All security teams, be alert, the hostiles are within a kilometer.  Mech team, I want a wedge formation.”

              The problem that soldiers faced in combat was fields of fire.  Everybody had their own field of fire, and they had to stick to this to ensure that they didn’t accidently engage members of their own team.  In infantry practice, a team of five men would move into a v shape, called a wedge, point towards the enemy, with the leader of the team at the point of the v.  This shape ensured that the team didn’t accidently shoot each other, and would ensure the maximum amount of fire power that they could inflict on the hostiles.  At least in theory.  Friendly fire wasn’t too friendly.