The laser emitters had discharged. Park thought numbly. The threat radar had-
This train of though was rudely derailed by the sound of tearing metal.
Something had hit them. The APC shuddered, a different set of alarms joining the cacophony.
"The fucking engine is shot!" Kowalski shouted over the intercom. "We're dead in the water!"
Park blinked desperately, trying to clear the afterimages seared across his retinas.. The battery had dumped a lot of juice into the APS discharge and the engine wasn't there to refill it. This was, to put it mildly sub-optimal.
Outside, gunfire cracked.
Hendrik Botha saw the missile streaking from the treeline a split second before the APS on the AIM vehicle fired. The flash of laser countermeasure was blinding even from two vehicles back. Seconds later, there was a explosion from the rear of the convoy.
"BAIL!" Botha screamed, already moving. "GET THE FUCK OUT NOW!"
He threw himself out of the commander's hatch, hitting the road hard and rolling behind the BTR's bulk. The back hatch had been lowered, and as the BTR ground to a halt, his boys dismounted.
"Fourie, get your section oriented! Bosman, MAG on that ridgeline!"
His men moved with professional discipline. Inside the BTR, the 30mm autocannon opened up, hammering the ridgeline.
Botha switched his radio to the convoy frequency. "Convoy lead, Five. We're dismounted, engaging targets eight hundred meters up the ridge. BTR providing fire support."
Static, then a panicked voice. One of the local officers. "Five, lead vehicle is—we're taking fire—"
"I can see that," Botha cut him off. Fucking moron.
He switched back to his squad net. "Controlled fire, conserve ammo. Our friends in the trees know what they're doing."
Aldridge cursed quietly as suppressing fire scythed above their heads.
Cooper's voice came over the radio, slightly breathless. "Killed the LT dismounting from Vehicle Four, but took shrapnel from a near-miss. Left shoulder. Repositioning."
Aldridge grabbed his final Javelin missile, slotted it into the launcher, and took aim at the lead armored car. Fired. Immediately rolled left as return fire cracked overhead. Heard the explosion. Mobility kill, at minimum. He dropped the launcher and pressed himself into the rocks.
One Javelin gone to that bloody laser. Always something with AIM.
Sgt. Cruz had been having a bad enough day before both lieutenants died. Whoever was shooting at them was clearly a higher grade of soldier then the standard issue sicario.
As if summoned by a malicious god, another explosion shattered the gunfire. Cruz groaned and suppressed the urge to hold his head in his hands. Poking his head out from behind the Urutu, he saw the lead Cascavel burning. Hopefully Varga had made it out alive. The bastard still owed him money from cards.
He grabbed his section leader. "Corporal Mendoza! Check on the AIM gringos. They pulled off that laser intercept earlier. I want to know if they can do it again. And make sure they're alive," he added almost as an afterthought.
Mendoza nodded and scrambled toward the disabled APC.
Aldridge assessed the tactical situation. The convoy was stuck. Four shots left in Thomson's heavy laser. He had no more Javelins and Thomson had one more. The convoy was getting organized, however and the clock was running.
They'd have to close to retrieve the targets.
His favourite part about the augmentation, besides the aches and pains he didn't have, was what it let him do with his body. Thomson could match him at a sprint, maybe better him. They could close the distance faster than any local yokel had ever seen. And in close quarters-
Aldridge would have staked his pension that nobody down there could match either of them in CQB.
He keyed his radio. "We're closing. Two, Three, Four, stay on overwatch and keep them suppressed. Five, you're with me."
"Copy," Thomson's voice came back.
Aldridge checked his rifle and his plasma sidearm. Ready as he'd ever be, he coiled his legs and leapt out from behind his rock.
Hendrik Botha allowed himself a small measure of professional satisfaction. They had the ambushers pinned.
He slapped Fourie on the shoulder. "I've been in tighter scrapes than this, mate. We'll be back in Azania in no time, and you can tell the ladies all about it."
A tearing snap came from the treeline and one of the San Domingo regulars dropped, clutching what remained of his arm. Botha sighed. Of course the locals didn't understand proper spacing under sniper fire.
The sniper was using an energy weapon, true, but the same principles held.
Still, the sniper was an annoyance, not a threat. The ambushers had to be out of proper anti-tank by now. They'd burned through their missiles on the opening volley and a followup, and that fokken anti-vehicle DEW hadn't made another appearance after the mobility kill on the AIM kludge. Small mercies. The attackers were professional enough, he'd give them that. Disciplined fire, good positions. But nothing his boys couldn't handle.
Marginally better than cartel gunsels. Nothing compared to real soldiers.
Then he saw movement on the ridgeline. Two human shapes, coming down fast. Too fast.
He stopped and stared.
"Jissis."
Like all proper Britons, Aldridge harbored an appropriate level of distaste for anything French. With that said, parkour was serviceable, especially when you were enhanced.
He came down the hillside at a dead sprint and everything else dropped away. It always did, but the enhancements had made it better somehow. Sharper. He simply existed, from one moment to the next. Cheung had tried to explain once that it sounded like meditation.
"Five, break right," he said over comms, breathing controlled. "Take the mercenary element. I'm going for the package."
"Copy." Thomson responded.
She angled right. Aldridge kept straight.
The M2 traversed toward him, long bursts tearing through the canopy, chewing stone and wood. He changed direction once, twice, felt rounds skip off rock centimetres from his boots. A burst walked up the slope ahead of him and he cut left through it. He felt the line of fire cross his thigh like a hot wire drawn fast across skin. Not deep. Enough to register.
He found a boulder at the treeline and hit it at full tilt, planting his foot and pushing off hard. The angle carried him out over the road, the Urutu's hull passing beneath him, and he came down on the far side in a roll that absorbed the impact and brought him straight back to his feet,in front of a utterly shocked local soldier.
Hendrik Botha wasn't sure what happened. One moment the BTR's turret had been firing at the figures sprinting down the hill, his boys popping up to support. The next, a blue woman vaulted the BTR's hull and landed in their position.
Fourie tried to bring his rifle up. Her arm blurred. He dropped, clutching his throat.
The turret was still traversing, Kruger trying to bring the autocannon around. The woman slapped her hand on the armored housing. Something metal on her wrist caught the light for a moment. Then a blade of coherent energy snapped out and she rammed it through the turret.
Too close to shoot. She was already moving. Du Toit went down. Venter went down. Someone rushed her from behind and she drove an elbow back without looking, turned, and the plasma blade finished it.
Then it was just Botha.
Thirty seconds.
The woman deactivated the blade. Faced him. Blue skin, yellow-tinged eyes, blood splattered across her body armor. She was breathing hard but not winded. A knife wound in her shoulder, another along her ribs. Barely slowing her down.
Botha still had his knife. For all the good it would do.
"Come on then, you blue mongrel bitch," he spat. Professional pride, Azanian superiority, rage at watching his men die. "Let's see how you do against a real soldier."
She smiled. No humor in it.
Botha rushed her,slashing with his knife. Last chance. Go for the throat, the eyes, something vital-
She stepped inside the arc of his slice, faster than he could track, and punched him in the side of the head.
The world went white. Then red. Botha felt himself falling.
He hit the ground. Couldn't move. Couldn't see properly. Blood in his mouth, his ear, running down his face.
Somewhere above him, the woman was moving away.
Cpl. Mendoza was terrified and tried his best not to show it. As he hammered at the rear hatch of the AIM vehicle, he felt like a plasma beam would find his skull at any moment. Thankfully, the door opened, revealing a very disheveled Gomez. Her yellow AIM beekeeper's suit was singed, her headpiece was off.
"Thank goodness you're here. We're dead in the water. Should we keep our heads down?"
"Yes. Things are relatively stable. They're pinned on the ridge. They shouldn't be able to close the distance."
In the background, the mercenaries' autocannon picked up its rate of fire, then went silent. Mendoza hadn't been in combat before, but from what he knew, that couldn't possibly be a good sign.
He turned around just in time to see a figure sprinting from the treeline. Forty meters and closing fast.
Both Urutu turrets traversed, trying to track. The M2s opened fire, long bursts tearing through jungle behind the running figure. Always a half-second late. Then a boulder at the treeline, a planted foot, and the figure was airborne, clearing the rear Urutu's hull entirely and coming down on the far side in a single fluid motion.
The turrets were still firing at where he'd been.
Mendoza caught glimpses through the gap between vehicles. Tactical gear, rifle slung. A soldier tried to bring his weapon up. The figure grabbed the rifle, tore it free, and the soldier dropped. Another man went for his sidearm. Blue flash at point-blank range. He went down. The whole thing took seconds. What remained of the rear section dropped their weapons.
Then the figure was moving again. Up the convoy line. Past the rear Urutu. Toward Cruz's position.
Cruz's section dropped their weapons
The man turned toward the AIM vehicle.
Toward Mendoza.
"GET INSIDE!" Gomez screamed, grabbing his arm. "GET INSIDE NOW!"
Sgt. Cruz held his hands behind his head, FAL on the ground at his feet.
He wasn't familiar with superhumans. One of his buddies had a cousin who was a mutant, but the guy just looked odd. Weird eyes and gills if you could believe it. The guy couldn't hurt anyone though. Nothing like this. Not the kind of speed and strength that could tear through a professional infantry section in seconds.
Cruz was a professional. Twelve years in the army had taught him when to fight and when to save his men's lives. This was the latter.
He ran back through the engagement in his head. Grenade from outside the turret's depression range. Sprint into the dead zone. Vault the hull. Two men down before anyone could react. The rest scattered, disorganized, no chance.
It was over the moment the man got within twenty-one feet.
Dealing with supersoldiers was well outside of Cruz's paygrade
Better to live and fight another day than throw lives away for nothing. His boys were still breathing. That was what mattered.
Dr. Sarah Lightman was regretting several of her life decisions.
The list was getting longer by the second, but at the top: ignoring her mother's advice to stay in academia. But tenure committees didn't fund expeditions to look for something as absurd as "time travelers". Peer reviewers called her theories "pseudo0archaeology." Grant applications came back rejected with polite suggestions she focus on more established fields.
Then a man had shown up at a conference. A generous backer needed someone with her expertise. The prospect of real funding and a chance to prove her theories had been too much to turn down.
Shed said yes
She hadn't known it was AIM at first. That revelation came three months in, when she arrived at a dig site in Costa Verde and found combat robots providing security instead of local contractors. Her liaison had been apologetic but frank: "Unlike more...conventional backers, Dr.Lightman, we will allow you to focus on the work."
She'd stayed.
The work had been genuinely interesting, and she'd even gotten to publish. Under a pseudonym, but still.
And she'd never been shot at. Not once in three years with AIM.
That had changed today.
The APC interior smelled of smoke and burnt insulation. The brief fire in the engine compartment had been frightening, but had been suppressed. Now they sat in the darkened crew compartment, emergency lighting casting everything in red, the air thick and hot.
Dr. Schreiber sat across from her, silent, face pale. Webb was near the front, talking quietly with Kowalski through the access hatch. Victoria Gomez had gone to the rear hatch when someone knocked. That scared local soldier, talking about something she couldn't quite discern.
One of her manifold regrets was not learning Spanish. She could understand bits and bobs, due to having a bit of Latin, but not enough to be useful
Her train of thought was interrupted when the gunfire outside stopped.
Lightman froze. Schreiber looked up. Webb turned from the forward hatch.
Silence. Just the faint sound of wind through the jungle and someone moaning in pain outside.
A knock at the rear hatch. Hard. Metallic. Deliberate.
Then a voice. Distinctly British. Calm. Professional.
"AIM personnel. You have ten seconds to open this hatch and come out with your hands visible. If you don't, we're coming in."
Lightman buried her face in her hands.
She really should have listened to her mother.
Aldridge waited ten seconds. No response from inside the APC except muffled voices.
He nodded to Thomson, twenty meters away. She moved to cover the hatch with her sidearm.
"Your time's up," Aldridge said, louder. "We're coming in. Last chance to do this the easy way."
The hatch cracked open. A woman's voice, American, shaking: "We're unarmed. We're coming out. Don't shoot."
"Hands visible. Slow movements."
The hatch swung downwards. A Hispanic woman stepped out first, hands high. Then an older white man in the same gear. An African-American woman followed. A middle-aged white man, muttering something under his breath. All four wore AIM's distinctive beekeeper suits. Finally, a local soldier stumbled out, hands up, terrified. "On the ground," Aldridge ordered. "Face down. Hands behind your heads."
They complied. The local soldier was shaking. Thomson moved to the front of the vehicle, rapping hard on the driver's hatch with her knuckles.
"You two out. Now. Hands visible."
Two hatches popped open. A Caucasian woman in her late twenties climbed out of the driver's position, hands up. A young Asian man followed from the other station, hands also raised. Both wore civilian clothes, not the protective suits. Bright yellow AIM polo shirts and black utility pants.
Aldridge keyed his radio. "Lead to all stations. Package secured. Four VIPs in custody, non-combatant. Preparing for exfil."
Cheung's voice came over the radio. "Lead, Four. I'm looking at the heavy truck at the rear of the convoy. Engine's running, no visible damage. The drivers are hiding behind it. Recommend we commandeer it for prisoner transport to LZ."
Aldridge paused.
"Good call. Five, you're closest. Drive it."
"Affirmative," Thomson replied.
"Load your heavy gear in back. We'll consolidate the prisoners and move out in two mikes."
Catherine Mills stretched, stepping out of the car. Donovan had called her three days after their meeting, asking if she was available for a "little trip." She had agreed, flying down to Washington, then getting driven by one of his creatures to somewhere in the back end of Maryland. John Donovan was in evidence, leaning against the front of the house.
"Afternoon Catherine. Drive was agreeable, I assume?"
Catherine kept her expression neutral. She had decided that she didn't like John Donovan. Besides having a healthy distaste for anybody who tried to kill her, the man was arrogant.
"About as well as can be expected."
"Shall we?"
He gestured towards the front door, then knocked.
A middle-aged man answered the door. Caucasian, around 5'11, vaguely middle-aged but with the kind of controlled stillness that marked serious training. Armed. Catherine could see the bulge under his sweater despite the casual jeans.
"Bit early for visitors John?"
Donovan gestured toward Catherine. "Brought a guest. We need to talk to your team."
The man's eyes flicked to Catherine, then back to Donovan. A beat. Then he stepped back from the door.
The interior matched the exterior. A careworn and unremarkable rural farmhouse. But the illusion broke immediately. Two Kevlar vests stacked near the stairs, a disassembled plasma rifle on the dining table, and a combat knife in the kitchen. The floral smell of tea clashed with the distinct tang of gun oil.
The sitting room held four people in various states of alertness.
A man in his early thirties with sandy blond hair and glasses looked up from a technical manual, cigarette dangling from his lips. Another man, lean and wiry with dark hair and unsettlingly focused grey eyes, sat in the corner with his arms crossed. An Asian man in his late twenties was cleaning a pistol with methodical precision at the coffee table. And on the couch, a woman with blue skin and black hair braided back looked up from a paperback novel.
The room went very still.
"Rich?" The man with glasses set his manual aside slowly. "What's this about?"
Aldridge closed the door behind them. "John's brought a guest. Says we'll find it interesting."
Donovan languidly moved to the center of the living room. "Lady, gentlemen, this is Catherine Mills. Ms. Mills, this is the team you've been looking for."
Catherine watched five sets of eyes lock onto her with varying degrees of suspicion.
"Catherine is representing the British government," Donovan continued, as if announcing the weather. "She's been tasked with locating ex-S.T.R.I.K.E. assets, specifically ones in the tri-state area and bringing them home."
Rich raised an eyebrow. "So, John, since you're not stupid enough to bring one of Vixen's creatures to a safehouse, I'll assume she's the real deal."
Donovan's expression didn't change. "She is."
Cooper nodded. "She's not anxious, for what that's worth."
A beat. Then Rich nodded once. "Aldridge." He glanced around the room. "You may as well."
"Graves." The bespectacled man raised two fingers from his manual in a minimal wave.
"Cheung." The Asian man didn't look up from the pistol.
The blue-skinned woman met Catherine's eyes. "Thomson."
"So, Ms. Mills." Aldridge leaned back. "To business. How do we know we aren't walking into our deaths back home? You may not be compromised, but the intelligence community in the UK as a whole-"
He left it there. The sentence didn't need finishing.
Catherine met his eyes. "I know the people who dug Vixen's network out. Every nook, every cranny. Compromise on that scale will not happen again."
Aldridge shrugged. "You say that. What's changed?"
"Responsibilities are being partitioned out. New agencies, separate remits. The Resource Control Executive handles the warpies. Weird Happenings takes the broader anomalous brief."
Aldridge frowned slightly. "Never heard of either of those."
"You've been very out of the loop."
"Fair. I've had to go by what I see in the papers." He leaned back. "Seems a bit disjoint."
Catherine kept her tone neutral. "Half the reason the subversion worked was everything being under one roof."
"Makes sense, that." He nodded slowly. "Though coordination's going to be a nightmare. I'm no bureaucrat, but I remember how shirty the RAF got about S.T.R.I.K.E.'s jets. MoD got involved. Right mess."
Catherine suppressed a shudder. "I'm sure the Joint Intelligence Committee has given that sufficient thought."
Aldridge badly suppressed a smirk. "Oh, I'm sure."
He sobered quickly.
"Anybody from PSI-div make it out? They managed to warn Cooper somehow."
"Braddock might have. As for the rest..."
Cooper went very still for a moment. Then he stood, movements controlled and deliberate.
"Going to get some air," he said quietly.
Aldridge gave him a small nod. Cooper walked out without another word.
"How about Pevensey?" Aldridge asked. "Graves left one of his model ships in his locker there. It'd be a shame if anything happened to it."
"Pevensey is currently the world's most expensive artificial reef."
Aldridge seemed surprised for the first time in the conversation. "What?"
"The decision came from the top. An air or naval assault would have been costly, so they opted for a more definitive solution."
Graves sighed. "Bugger."
The Asian man cleared his throat. "While it's nice to get some closure on some open ends, what's waiting for us back home?"
"That's up to you," Catherine said. "Personally, my handler would be very happy to have you all back. He'd be hesitant to break up the last Special Operations Section that we have. You all have vast experience with unconventional threats. That counts for something."
Aldridge nodded. "Right. We need to discuss this. Privately. Send Cooper back in if you see him."
Donovan stood. "Take your time. Catherine, let's get some air."
Catherine sat with her thoughts, staring as the clouds scudded past. Donovan was at the far end of the porch, quietly reading a paperback, apparently unconcerned.
She ran the numbers, as she had been running them since the car ride over.
Thomson was the obvious priority. Genetic experimentation on that scale tended to be expensive.
Aldridge was the other consideration. She'd seen Captain Midlands sparring once, a few years back. She recognized the type. The particular stillness. Whatever program had produced him hadn't been cheap either.
The British government would very much like its investments back.
Donovan turned a page. She wondered if he was actually reading or just performing calm at her. Probably both. Prick.
The front door stayed closed.
Around twenty minutes later it cracked open. Aldridge poked his head out.
"We're going back. Need to sort out the details, but we're coming home."
Catherine allowed herself the smallest hint of relief. "Good. Let's talk specifics."