Rubicon, page 10
With a flashing yellow warning light and a soft rumble, Adriene’s stomach turned. The ship had left subspace.
“Exit complete.” In the pilot’s seat, Gallagher tapped a few flight controls. “Systems nominal. Radar’s clear.”
“Copy clear,” Brigham replied from the copilot’s chair.
Adriene scanned the viewscreen as they approached their destination. The silver arc of Cimarosa-IV stretched out below them, the visible hemisphere almost entirely covered in thick clouds. A light blue haze of atmosphere stretched up into inky black, dotted with dustings of stars. They must have been facing the galactic center, because a dense, star-strewn backdrop stretched out behind the rim of the world, like a dust storm frozen in motion, blowing thousands of glittering flecks of sand across an impossibly black sky.
Brigham’s voice boomed as he called over his shoulder, “Look alive, Lian.”
Adriene glanced back to Kato, his ivory skin ashen as he sat hunched in a row of troop seats along the back wall, opposite the large storage lockers that housed their suits and loadouts. He leaned forward, the definition of death warmed over, and buried his face in his hands. “I think I’m gonna die,” he mumbled, then his elbows dropped and he folded, laying his head on his knees.
Adriene pressed her fingers into her temples, abating her headache slightly. The remnants of Kato’s whiskey hadn’t been her last drink of the evening. But for the first time in two weeks, she’d slept through the night—all four hours of it—without a single nightmare. And when she woke, she’d felt better than she had since she’d last rezoned. More balanced, lucid. Real.
In a way, she welcomed the hangover—the headaches, dizziness, low-level nausea all acting as a guidepost. A baseline from which she could pretend to function on a semi-normal level.
Yet guilt still grated at the back of her mind, a warning that she’d squandered the opportunity. A chance at starting over, at doing things differently.
Maybe this husk needed it. Maybe that was what’d been missing—why she’d felt no embarrassment during Flintlock’s uncouth line of questioning, or hadn’t missed Harlan’s stupid jokes, or why she couldn’t let herself be optimistic about a future with the 505th—a future in which she might not die. Or why she felt like an imposter in her own body.
Adriene clasped the open collar of her hardsuit, hanging her hands along the rim. The viewscreen’s perspective shifted as Gallagher altered vector. Above them, a tiny, rocky moon came into view, one that’d suffered an impact some time ago. From the point of collision, fragments had splintered off, breaking away in curving arcs along the invisible lines of orbit. Eventually, Cimarosa-IV’s gravity would claim the debris, and the moon’s shards would be pulled into the atmosphere. Though by the time the pieces reached the surface, they’d likely be nothing but dust.
“We have an LZ?” Brigham asked.
Gallagher brought up a map on the control screen. “Intel cleared this entire valley.”
Brigham nodded. “All right, tiptoe on down. We’ll play it by ear.”
“Copy tiptoe,” Gallagher said. “Atmo in ten.”
“Activating Rubicons.”
“Copy, sir,” Gallagher said.
Kato groaned, “Thank Mira,” likely looking forward to another hangover cocktail.
Before Adriene could respond, a twinge fired through the back of her eyes along with a short flash of white. It cleared away, and the simple, sharp, black-or-white HUD lines overlaid her vision.
// Welcome to Rubicon. //
She winced, the VI’s internal vocalization reigniting her headache. The others didn’t even react.
“Atmo incoming,” Gallagher announced. “Stealth engaged. Buckle up.”
Brigham and Gallagher pulled their harnesses over their shoulders and strapped themselves into the pilots’ seats as Adriene sat beside Kato. However, the chairs weren’t equipped with standard harnesses, and as she sat down, a shink of magnetized metal sounded. Her back popped against the seat as the rails locked onto her hardsuit and secured her flush with the chair.
The dropship hummed and rattled as they entered the atmosphere. Adriene’s stomach churned, but the turbulence lessened as they descended.
A few minutes later, they were through the thick cloud cover. Gallagher lowered the ship, skimming above the top of the thick, green jungle canopy.
Though daytime, a blanket of marbled clouds stretched out in every direction, casting the landscape in a gloomy dreariness. Plumes of dark haze indicated heavy rainfall in the distance.
To the west, a wide, black river ran to the edge of a massive cliff. The water cascaded off the edge, through jagged tiers of moss and vine-covered bedrock, collecting in pools before flowing down to the next level. The bottom of the impressive waterfall disappeared into a basin surrounded by dark jungle, shrouded in a haze of mist. Verdant flatlands lay to the east, but they’d be headed west, deeper into the jungle.
Brigham selected a landing zone, and Gallagher set the dropship down in a small clearing. They donned their helmets and loadouts, then gathered by the air lock.
“Comms check,” Kato said pleasantly, and the blue lines on his suit glowed a little brighter while he spoke. The others sounded off, their lines also brightening.
Adriene locked her helmet on and reported in last. “Valero. Check, check, check.”
“Good check, Ninety-Six,” Kato confirmed. “Everyone’s five by five, boss.”
“All right, Forward Recon,” Brigham began, clearing his throat. “I know the briefing with the major was pretty … well, brief, but the objectives are just variations on the normal shit. We get boots on the ground, find somewhere to stage groundside, round up a nice recon package of the target facility. We need a full workup: entrance points, blueprints, extraction options, security systems, patrol schedules.”
Adriene nodded along, mimicking the others’ passive reactions to the rather intimidating list of requests. Brigham hadn’t been exaggerating before—Forward Recon really did lay the groundwork for the rest of the company.
“We’ve got twenty-eight hours before the other squads join us,” Brigham continued with an air of conclusion. “Let’s put our hospitality hats on and get the place ready for guests.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” Kato piped with a flimsy salute.
Brigham went to the air lock controls, the door opened, and the ramp lowered.
// Atmospheric shift detected. Oxygen concentration: seventeen percent. Three hundred nineteen K. Ninety-nine-point-eight percent humidity. //
“Overwatch’s clear,” Gallagher said.
Brigham stepped onto the ramp. Adriene shouldered her rifle and followed.
Humidity hung heavy in the air, shrouding the gloomy clearing in a thick, misty haze. Adriene could barely make out the edge of the forest five meters off, and only blackness lay within the gnarled boughs.
A thin, vertical line appeared in her HUD and dragged across the darkness.
// Decreased visibility detected. Enhancing … //
A heavy, painful pressure weighed on Adriene’s eyes, like stepping out into the sunlight after being in a dark room for too long.
She blinked hard. Her vision had brightened, but there was suddenly so much to see, she could hardly process the information. She took a deep breath, tried to ignore the details, and focused on the bigger picture.
Predominant among a whole host of strange alien flora were hundreds of thick-trunked trees that wound upward into a dense canopy. The scaly bark was such a deep, charcoal black it looked like it’d been burned. The branches twisted into one another imperceptibly, making it impossible to tell where one started and the other ended.
Adriene hesitated, considering if it could be one massive organism—a single giant, forest-wide arboreal structure where each “trunk” was only one of thousands of root systems securing it to the earth.
// That hypothesis is well-substantiated based on current data sets. Though Rubicon has yet to uncover any specifics that would constitute hard evidence. //
Adriene’s brow creased. You’ve been gathering data?
// Of course. //
Brigham’s red-limned suit rails lit up. “All right.” He turned to face Adriene as Kato and Gallagher stepped up beside her. “Step one, we find a suitable staging ground for a base camp. Let’s save our backs: We scout, then come back for the supplies. But, Gallagher, ready a drone with an emergency supply drop, just in case.”
“Copy that,” Gallagher said, then slung her rifle and headed back into the ship.
“Odd,” Kato mumbled. “I can’t find a single scrapper security ping from here to the facility.”
Brigham shrugged. “Probably staying on low power. That’s a good sign—means they still don’t know we’re coming. Just keep an eye as we get closer.”
Kato flashed a thumbs-up. “You got it, boss.”
“Valero,” Brigham said, “where are you thinking we should start?”
Adriene recentered her focus. Right. No COB kit to set up, no programs to load, no scripts to run … She only had to think.
“Sorry, Lieutenant,” she replied. “Still getting used to this thing in my head. I’m going to need a minute.”
Brigham nodded and motioned to Kato. They descended the ramp and took posts near the bow and stern of the ship, weapons in hand.
Adriene drew in a deep breath and thought about what she wanted: a survey of the land two klicks this side of the target facility. That’d get them close enough to get a more detailed survey of the ruins, without triggering typical Mechan surveillance patterns.
In an instant, a semitransparent topographical map appeared in her vision.
She swiveled her head; the overlay stayed locked to the terrain. Helpful—very helpful—in that she could effectively see terrain through obstructions. But, from so far away, she couldn’t get the kind of detail she needed.
She squinted at a far-off area north of the basin. Her periphery darkened as the overlay zoomed into the spot, but the motion sent her stomach lurching, and the map snapped back into place and reset.
She briefly closed her eyes, head spinning.
// Rubicon offers a tactile interface option you may feel more comfortable utilizing until you can become accustomed to augmented reality. //
Uh, sure. Like an interactive hologram?
// Precisely. //
Go ahead.
The map appeared again, though a much smaller scale, and the image stayed locked in place despite her eye movements. She reached out and crossed her hands in front of the area she wanted to focus on, and the view zoomed in.
She’d used similar tech only a handful of times in the 803rd when reviewing surveys or blueprints, though the interface had been confined to a holotable. The fact that her Rubicon saw this as the “training wheels” both impressed and unnerved her.
Can you overlay surface and groundwater?
A blue glow flashed over the hologram, and the massive black river to the south became visible along the gridded terrain. It led north to the waterfall, down what had to be a 1,500-meter drop into the basin. From there, it cascaded even farther belowground into what seemed to be a massive underground lake, though the survey’s clarity became unreliable at that depth.
She homed in on a decent high point with solid ground less than two klicks south-southeast of the facility. Without getting closer, she couldn’t be sure, but it would be as good a place as any to start. She envisioned where to place the pip on the map, and her Rubicon complied, marking the location and pushing it out to the others’ HUDs.
“Looks good to me,” Brigham said.
Gallagher exited the ship and joined Adriene at the bottom of the ramp. “Drone’s all ready,” Gallagher said. The ramp whirred as it raised to seal behind her. “And the ship’s prepped for recall.”
“Let’s hope we don’t need it,” Brigham said. “Lead the way, Ninety-Six.”
Adriene considered the best approach vector, prompting an arrow symbol to flash in her HUD.
// Calculating route … //
A wide red line appeared on the ground at her feet, leading off into the dense jungle. She followed the line up to the forest’s edge where a thick knot of branches and vines blockaded any possible way in.
She chewed her bottom lip. “This vegetation’s dense … We’re going to have to clear a path.”
“Oh, fun,” Kato piped. “Can I do it?” He held his right hand up in a fist. A small burst of flame spouted from a nozzle atop his wrist.
Gallagher’s green suit lights bloomed. “Yeah, that seems like a good way to burn the entire forest down.”
“It’s a rain forest,” he said, “it’s not gonna burn down.” His visor swung to face Adriene. “Right?”
“It’s not really that simple,” Adriene admitted. “And considering we’re supposed to keep quiet, we may not want to start anything on fire.”
Brigham stepped up to the brush, then thrust both arms out to either side. Wide blades extended from the length of his forearms, elbow to wrist like massive razor blades. He slid one arm into a tangle of vines, and it sliced through like butter.
He grunted. “Looks like blades’ll do the trick.”
Adriene gaped at the glinting blades. That feature had definitely not been covered in the sims—or the lecture.
Which meant it wasn’t even an upgrade. Of course something that would have been a literal lifesaver in the 803rd would be considered old hat by the 505th.
// Activating utility blades. //
Adriene startled as the same wide, razor-like lengths of metal extended from her own forearms. She hadn’t even realized she’d made the request.
Refocusing on her HUD, she stepped along the path of the virtual red line to the forest’s edge. She swept her arms out in an X.
Most of the greenery fell away easily, but the blade on her right arm stuck in a particularly thick vine. She jerked her arm to dislodge it, but to no avail.
// Priming … //
Priming wha—?
The stuck blade glowed white, then the black bark smoldered. The hot blade fell loose from the scorched, notched vine.
Adriene lifted her arm in awe as the blade cooled.
The terms she’d read about and heard the others use for the VI: “aid,” “ally,” “assistant” … None of that felt right to her. It seemed far less restrained than she felt strictly comfortable with. Convenient, sure, especially considering she’d had hardly any training on the tech. Yet instead of warming up to the idea and slowly getting used to the strangeness, the more often it did something proactive, the more wariness crept in.
Brigham cleared his throat. “Combat stealth on, everyone.”
A notification flashed into Adriene’s HUD.
// Stealth mode 2A engaged. //
Her squadmates’ suits flickered a shimmery black, then practically disappeared into the underbrush. She’d hardly be able to see them at all if it weren’t for the colorful, illuminated lines still tracing brightly in her HUD.
Adriene kept on the path of the red line, slicing away brush with her superheated, bladed arms. Brigham followed just off her shoulder, weapon at the ready, with Kato next and Gallagher watching the rear.
Though it’d been daytime outside the canopy, underneath it might as well have been the dead of night. Even with her enhanced vision, holes of deep shadow surrounded them. The forest remained surprisingly quiet, save for the squish of their boots in the soft mud. Adriene kept an eye out for fauna, but thermal scans and motion detection seemed to corroborate a lack of animal life. Thankfully, the density of vines lessened somewhat as they continued, and soon Adriene only had to pause to clear a path every five or six meters.
After about a klick that took the better part of an hour to traverse, she sliced her way into a small glade where a wide river snaked through the vegetation. The thick, twisted vines of the trees still stretched overhead, continuing the unending canopy over the water. The light murmur of a waterfall came from somewhere to the south—an almost peaceful drone of white noise deadened by the walls of dense brush.
Adriene was briefly annoyed that her Rubicon had calculated a path through a body of water, but moments later, a new readout appeared: The depth reached less than a half meter. She asked her Rubicon to scan the water, and thermals and sonic came back negative.
So she waded in and the others followed, fanning out into a wider coverage formation now that they had more room.
Adriene unslung her rifle and kept her focus down the barrel, though she couldn’t help but spare a glance into the disturbingly dark water. It seemed almost thick, parting sluggishly as the sleek panels of her hardsuit sliced through the mirrorlike stillness.
“Wait,” Kato faltered. “You guys see that? In the water?”
“Cut it out,” Brigham groused.
“I saw it too,” Gallagher confirmed. “Looked like it was under the surface, but the water didn’t move.”
“My scans don’t see shit,” Brigham said. “Valero?”
Adriene faced them, eyes and rifle scope darting across the water at their feet, but she saw nothing.
She shook her head. “Sensors are—”
// Warning: Hostiles detected. //
Alerts erupted into Adriene’s HUD, blaring in her earpiece. Heat seared her cheeks. She darted her look around the glade, confused—she still had no idea what direction the threat was coming from.
A bold, aggressive arrow appeared in her HUD. Pointing straight upward. She lifted her gaze just in time to see a mass of vines envelop her vision.
CHAPTER
EIGHT
Adriene fell back into the river, and the forest disappeared, engulfed by dark water.
Within a heartbeat, her HUD flashed with the engagement of some type of buoyancy feature. It propelled her back to the surface, and she caught her footing, armored boots sliding across the mucky silt of the river bottom as she managed to force herself upright.
