Author's Preface
You act enraged that I killed a hundred or so people without due process. You all sit here acting superior, reaffirming your moral superiority in the face of a monster. Me. But do you waste one second thinking about what needs to be done in the dark, so you can live your perfect lives?
None of my 'victims' was innocent, and every single one of them would have torn the Aligned systems apart if given the chance.
Scientists who sell bioweapons to terrorists for a quick buck. Anarchists planning to blow up Heaven One with antimatter.
A single drop of antimatter is enough to kill a million people, in the hands of a dedicated man willing to die for the cause.
Now you sit here and think you can judge me, but if I had failed even once to do my duty, all of you would have cried, "Why did no one stop them?"
You want them stopped, you want them dead. You just don't want to know about it.
— Major Greenhaven, at his hearing before the Senate, 1034 P.I.
"Venatio 1, thirty minutes to target."
The pilot's voice rang out clear through André's earpiece. He turned to address his team.
"Thirty minutes, guys," and with a glance at their sniper Eleri, "and girls."
Their craft was from the Drake stealth prototype line, like the ship they had used to leave the Argos . Zero EM emissions, almost no infrared signature, and no personal space in the tiny cargo hold.
He sat back down next to Eleri, checking his gear for the umpteenth time. Eleri was in the process of dismantling her sniper rifle and securing the parts to her armor via maglocks.
A "Drakanov," as she called it. Drake had bought several Eastern European arms manufacturers two decades back, when he started building infantry weapons of his own.
"Any new updates from Hunter on our target?" Her helmet was already closed, so he couldn't see her face. But her voice was flat, as always when she went on 'those' missions.
"No, just that the last signal we traced led to this location."
The location was a first. He had done some hunts with Eleri, but never on Earth. And never before had he led a black ops team on a search-and-destroy mission into an ancient, previously unknown Khmer temple in the middle of the Cambodian jungle, roughly a hundred kilometers north of the famous Angkor Wat.
"I hate jungle, it's full of spiders."
Grawn, the team's heavy weapons specialist, shuddered in his suit. Shraphen made exemplary heavies, with their large stature and muscle mass. Too bad Shraphen military philosophy never evolved beyond hunting packs. Then André remembered their first battle against the Shraphen and corrected himself: maybe that was good for Humans.
"Does Burrow even have spiders?"
Altaniin Batu, the team's electronic warfare specialist, looked up from his data slate and asked with the enthusiasm only a boy in his twenties can have. And to André, everyone under thirty was a boy.
Before Grawn could answer, the team's Glider, FuckItImOut, answered dryly, "Not anymore."
Batu's face turned red; he wasn't used to the Gliders' dark humor. "That's not funny."
André had to give Grawn credit; he defused the situation professionally. "Well, he's right. But we had a few arachnoid species similar to Earth spiders, one was as large as a Glider."
The team continued their banter while André focused back on the mission briefing he had gotten from AIN Director Hunter. A year ago, Alvin Drake had them hunt down the leaders of the conspiracy, only to stop halfway through because of the Burrow Crisis. Now that Drake Interstellar was restructured, they decided to end the conspirators, once and for all. Director Hunter wasn't happy about it, but after they uncovered five traitors in AIN, he was fully on board. And now they were about to attack one of the conspirators' communication nodes.
Eleri stood up, her sniper rifle stored safely away, and began to check her sidearms. She preferred to use two FN Hipers. Her combat implants, together with the suit's combat VI, allowed for real dual-wielding of pistols.
In the darkness of the crew compartment, André couldn't see her clearly. But her movements had become robotic, a clear sign she was shoving her emotions away again. She had been next to him ever since he arrived on the Argos . How long ago was that now? Two years? Longer than his last marriage…
"Thank you."
Eleri's head turned to face him.
"What?"
"I never thanked you. When I look back at the last two years, there's one person always next to me. You."
With her helmet on, he couldn't see her face, but the way she shifted weight from one foot to the other, he assumed she was somewhat embarrassed. Eleri pointed at her surroundings, the dark passenger compartment only barely lit by red light, the other teammates preparing their gear and relieving stress by pulling each other's chains.
"Best moment to get emotional, Major. Perfect timing."
She only called him Major now to tease him.
"Just wanted to say thank you for risking your ass time and time again to save mine."
Eleri looked at her backside.
"Yeah. It's too nice an ass to risk. Guess I'm stupid."
The pilot ended the now-drifting discussion with his next announcement.
"T-10, encountering heavy EM sensors and radar. Going dark."
The engine noise stopped. The shuttle now turned itself into a glider. Ultrathin wings of carbon nanofabric unfolded, spanning more than 300 meters.
Large enough to hold their altitude of 80 kilometers long enough for them to drop and for the shuttle to leave the hot zone and reengage its engines.
The same fabric formed their suits. High Mobility combined with Ballistic Protection. HiMoBP, or Highmobs as the agents called them.
The first technology adapted from their alien allies, the Shraphen. Humanity had tested the waters with carbon nanotubes, with some success, but only for straight lines, not as fabric. But Shraphen were specialists in that area.
Looking at how the suit complemented Eleri's form, leaving nothing to the imagination, André was sure the thin, skintight fabric would soon find a market well outside the military. Very soon.
"Reaching LZ in two."
The team went to their designated drop circles. Adapted from the Templar drop technology, the circle would open, spray them with kinetic gel, cover them in a personal SVDS, and drop them 80 kilometers to the ground.
He hated it.
"Drop, drop, drop."
The pilot hadn't finished his call when the ground beneath André opened. Forcing himself to hold his arms tight to his body, he dropped into nothing.
He always kept his eyes closed; he couldn't do it with them open. The gel coated him as he rushed past the sprinklers, then a short ripping sensation as the invisible SVDS wrapping sealed around him.
He always felt like a piece of meat dropped through seasonings into dough, only to land in a frying pan.
And the frying came soon enough.
He still had his eyes closed, but he knew he was in free fall, the outside of the SVDS getting hotter and hotter, the kinetic gel eagerly absorbing the heat.
The new version formed into a droplet, dispersing the entry heat more efficiently, thus saving gel while still increasing the survival rate.
André personally didn't care about saving gel; he was, however, extremely interested in surviving. And no matter how often troops successfully inserted via SVDS, jumping out of a perfectly fine transporter was still madness, even more so without a parachute.
The Templars used the landing as a weapon. Targeting troop formations to land between them, ideally on them.
Venatores, like his team, usually preferred to land unseen.
Their landing site was outside the temple complex, about 500 meters south.
He had just passed 1,400 km/h, at least that's what his suit's combat VI said.
Information he could do without.
Soon his fall would slow as the air got denser.
In his HUD, he checked the live images from their landing site. Still no movement. The shuttle had left the hot zone and coasted out of Cambodian airspace.
Cambodia was one of the few countries that weren't members of EarthGov, so his team would be hunted not only by the installation's security, but by the entire Cambodian Army if something went wrong.
Happy thoughts.
Touchdown was two minutes away. Landing was the wrong term when you smashed into the ground at 480 km/h, and only kinetic gel kept you from being a short-lived meteor and an interesting collection of organs in a shallow crater.
Before his first jump, he had thought touchdown would be a frightening experience. Fact was, one moment you're free-falling, the next you're standing on the field, gel boiling around you and dripping from every surface.
That's it. The brain wasn't built to experience such quick deceleration.
Why am I focusing so much on death today? What's wrong with me?
Before André could think about it any longer, the ground pressed against him and forced him to his knees. Again, he hadn't noticed touchdown before it was already over.
About 20 meters away from him, Eleri crashed through the foliage. He was showered in the remains of 75 cubic meters of gel evaporating.
André braced himself, as always, for the splash, only to realize again how counterintuitive kinetic gel actually was. The way it behaved implied it was about as heavy as water. It wasn't. One cubic meter weighed about a kilogram, since it was mostly air.
Grawn was next. He was heavier, so the shower was more intense; his body had been immersed in about 200 cubic meters of gel.
The equation was simple: about a cubic meter for every kilogram of mass.
Batu landed like Eleri, in the dense jungle undergrowth.
But his landing wasn't without serious issues.
The instant he touched down, everyone knew something had happened. Usually a landing was almost silent, except for a wet splash, but now the team could hear him scream in pain, not only via radio.
They had trained for landing incidents. Grawn immediately secured the landing site, while André and Eleri ran to help their injured teammate.
André's HUD displayed the team's biomarkers, and Batu's showed stress and inflammation markers rising.
As he reached Batu, it was clear what had happened.
Touchdown is safe as long as the ground is flat. Land on both legs and your tendons will hate you, but you'll survive.
Batu had hit an ancient wall hidden under the foliage with his right foot, breaking his leg in the process.
"Lie still. You've broken your leg in multiple places. Administering pain medication and a batch of xenobots."
Eleri sat down next to her teammate, while André checked on FuckItImOut in Batu's secured pouch. The Glider moved, and his biosigns were fine.
"Damn, remind me to never do that again."
"Then you shouldn't be on our team."
The Glider looked intensely into André's eyes. "Where's the fun in that? So Batu's out, guess you'll carry me?"
Eleri stood up, pulling André aside.
"He's out for an hour. I gave him xenobots and an intense exosome treatment. The suit is repairing the damage and will be able to carry his weight in about two hours, but there's no way we can take him with us on the mission."
André was prepared for bad news. At least the boy would be able to walk again in time. Just that the mission was at risk now.
"Okay, ideas?"
"I can easily take over Batu's electronic duties. I'm just a bit handicapped in the whole fighting thing."
André nodded at the small Glider. Like all of them, he had a foul mouth but a good heart, and was brave beyond his small body.
"It's up to you, boss, but either way, we need to rest here or close by for a few hours for Batu to exfiltrate, so why not use them?"
Grawn was right. They had to wait at least two hours even if they decided to abort the mission. Their exfiltration zone was 30 kilometers away.
The whole area had been devastated by the Indochina Tsunami decades ago, and the former farmland was now dense jungle. Five hundred meters was a safe distance in the dense jungle for them not to be detected by the guards.
Batu was safe here. But the mission needed to go on.
"Grawn, give Eleri your explosives, then guard Batu until he's mobile. If we're not back by then, start moving to the exfil site. Don't wait. Eleri, Fuckit, and I will scout out the temples and see what we can learn. Understood?"
"Got it, boss."
While Grawn and Eleri exchanged equipment, André began shifting his own gear to accommodate the Glider pouch. After a minute or so, they were ready.
With their dark blue suits, they were almost invisible in the moonless night, but they had to be careful with their radio communication. Whoever had built the installation at the temple had invested heavily in EM detection. And their suits were too light to carry p-p radios.
André was not used to jungle, no one who didn't grow up in one was, so the walk to the outskirts of their target took longer than expected.
They reached another ancient wall that separated the forest from the open area around the temple. The area was a square, roughly 400 meters to a side, with a small temple in the middle.
While planning the mission, satellite images had indicated the installation was manned by no more than ten people, equipped with light infantry gear.
Now André stared at two companies of mercenaries equipped with heavy gear, search-and-destroy drones, and other equipment he couldn't identify.
A voice was clearly audible, screaming in Khmer. André waited for the VI to translate.
"…the enemy has landed as expected. The landing site is somewhere south of here. Use extreme force. No one is allowed to survive."
"Fuck my life." André had never known Eleri to curse, but he agreed completely.
If you're a spy and you try to infiltrate an almost unprotected site, only to discover the enemy waiting for you with half an army, you know someone betrayed you. You pack your gear and run. Things change, of course, if one of your teammates can't move. Then things will get ugly.