Ch 9 Not the Rock & Roll I Intended

This is bold, I thought. Even for them. Why are they putting in so much effort to get you out of the city? You’re important to them. Somehow. Do you know something? Are they trying to keep a lid on it? The lone survivor of Greenbrier… who knows what secrets you’re keeping for them.

Round and round the questions swirled, succumbing to the churn with no answers rising to the top.

Open swaths of sand and grit covered the first five-miles to the east of Iskiros, afterwards, patches of vegetation clustered together, separating like the gaps expanding across craggy ground. They had a head start on us, sure. It just meant that they would be the first to arrive for the party we had planned.

I rode in the passenger seat of a four-door truck. I knew the driver, Franco, to be rather calm under pressure, but I was less familiar with the gunner, whose legs dangled from the turret mounted over the back seats. The trouble with these untested  sorts is they typically thought they had something to prove, especially when they rode in my truck.

Dual screens hovered over my lap, mounted to an articulating arm that could be swung out of the way—one showed Icarus’ feed, our arial drone, the other allowing me to track our position on a digital map. Between the deteriorating road, our all-terrain tires, the grit funneling in through the gunner’s turret, and the nearly red-lining hum of our truck’s RPM, our trip was something less than peaceful.

Ahead, I could see the dust-stirred air—the mark of our prey’s passing and a sign that we were getting close. They were moving fast. They might have been prepared for trouble, but they weren’t expecting it. If they were, they would be sprinting. Looks like they’ll be reaching the surprise party soon. There will be gunfire then. Everyone needs to be ready. That means you too, Ameelio.

I grabbed the nearby handheld clipped onto the radio by a curly-q cord. “Seeker-2, this is Seeker-1, I’ve got eyes on the target. What’s your status?”

“Seeker-2, all green.”

“Move Icarus over the target.”

“Copy.”

“Seeker-3 through 5, status?” A sequential ‘Green’ followed. “Seeker-6 and 7, you two are on clean-up. If we get any stragglers, make sure they don’t turn this encounter into a Show-and-Tell.”

“Copy, Seeker-1.”

I was commanding the drone feed, manipulating the camera’s angle with a joystick as I scrutinized the vehicles that made up their convoy. The third vehicle was a van. That’s our target. And their number two truck is likely… I cycled camera sensors as I appraised the second truck. Extra antennas. As I thought. That’ll be their command vehicle.

Our truck hit a pothole and I rocked forward, pushing my screens away. “Jeez, Franco. I think you missed one back there.”

“Sorry, boss,” he yelled. “If you want, I can try to catch it on the way back.”

“That’s the problem. You keep hitting those, and I’m not so sure we’ll get a return trip.”

He just grinned back at me, staring out from under the large goggles that hugged over his eyes, a helmet sitting down over his head.

I shook my head and pulled the maps back around before glancing back up to their dust plume. They’re almost to the tripwire. I need that vehicle offline and fast. I positioned my sight back over their command truck, flipped a toggle, then pressed the launch activation for Icarus.

I raised a safety cover and depressed a button, squeezing and painting the desired truck with a laser that would guide a missile which was already on the way. Seconds passed in a crawl as I hyper fixated on the target sitting inside a small box on my screen. The missile flickered into sight at the top of my screen, the truck rocking in the same moment, my thumb skewing the joystick.

Shit! Did it hit? I quickly reoriented the camera just in time to see their lead vehicle strike the trip wire. I glanced up to see secondary plumes of smoke rocketing into the air and red brake lights illuminating to glare out the backside of their sediment screen.

“You got ‘em!” Franco called.

I wasn’t convinced, but their convoy was completely concealed. I looked it over, cycling Icarus’ censors, one of which showed heat variations and revealed my concern made real. The missile hadn’t hit directly, instead hitting at the aft right wheel and sending it tumbling into the adjacent tree line. It might have been out of commission drive-wise, but we couldn’t be certain on its communication abilities.

I grabbed the radio. “Command is down but not out! I say again, they may still have communication capabilities. Let’s wrap this up ASAP. Weapons hot. You will only fire when you can positively identify your targets. Firing is with extreme prejudice.”

I pointed, gesturing off the side of the road as we moved within fifty-yards of the dust wall that marked the convoy. “Circle around the trees on the right. Let’s get out ahead of them.” I immediately regretted the idea, the truck bounding in jerky motions over the uneven, craggy ground.

“Seeker-4 and 5,” I began, pausing to place my hand against the ceiling to brace against the rocking our truck was doing. “Circle the opposite direction. Meet us on the far side. Six and Seven, cover the west approach. Keep them boxed in.”

“Copy!”

The span of trees we circled was around a dozen or so yards deep, twice as much wide. Icarus remained overhead but it was hard to distinguish some of the finer details, the uneven terrain causing some of the imagery to blur. It looked as though the van might have hit the missile’s impact crater. It was sitting sideways along the roadway, its front end stopped at the impact site.

The other vehicles had offloaded guards and they looked to have formed a defensive perimeter, a shell it was going to take time to crack. All that’s fine so long as they aren’t able to call in any help.

Thank, Eos, we made it back to the roadway on the opposite side. The ride smoothed out and I was able to see more of the details within the dust screen. The guards were posting up behind vehicles, poised to use them as cover while firing outwards. Smart. But as expected. Too bad we just have the one other missile and not some sort of anti-personnel weaponry.

“What is that?” Franco asked.

I looked up and glanced out my window, seeing our other vehicles approaching from the opposite side of the road, then looked back at him. He was staring out ahead of us and up. I followed his gaze, my eyebrows screwing up as I saw what he was referring to. It looked like a sun or moon. Or something sitting just above the horizon and— My eyes widened.

“Incoming!” I yelled, reaching and grabbing hold of the steering-wheel before jerking it my direction. We sailed back off the roadway again as I heard the impact that must’ve hit near the convoy. Our front end dipped, the truck bucked, and suddenly, we were rolling.

Then—there was blackness.

Someone was speaking, though they were underwater. “Mromo,” they said, drawing closer. I could see distorted figures as they dragged me forward, the sun unreasonably bright as I squinted, trying to shield my eyes.

“Promo? Can you hear me?”

I could hear them just fine. It was hard not to when they were screaming in your face. Seeing them, on the other hand, that was a different story. It was odd. While I had awaken many a times with the dreaded bed head, I can’t recall ever dealing with a case of blurry face. This person should really see to that. And soon, as it was making me feel nauseous.

“Promo? Do you know where you are?”

Well that’s a stupid question, I thought, then looked over my shoulder and grew less certain. “Outside?” That seemed right.

A truck was at my feet, its nearest door open and its wheels in the air. Wait, I was in that truck. I wanted to stand, but winced instead. My head was ringing.

“Just lie still,” someone said, placing their hand on my shoulder and pushing me back.

His face was fixed now. “Ameelio?”

“That’s right. Just take it easy. You were in a crash.”

My eyes darted between others moving nearby. “The mission! We gotta—”

Ameelio shook his head. “It’s done. We’re torching what little evidence is still here. But there’s no longer anything here for us. The convoy was hit by something. A blast. It’s all gone, Promo. All of it.”

I settled back, then. Gone. Just like that. We had lost.