Ghost of the Gods - 02 (41 page)

“Scorched earth!” growled Mark. “We create a firewall around each hive then use assists to verify every last network path has been destroyed.”

“Can you scorch a path several feet underground, assuming there are no subterranean waterways that run deeper?” asked Noah. “Can you scorch an area with a diameter of a half mile or even a mile? These mines are deep. The only good explanation for such a weak pull from the guide is that its connection to the n-web is diffused over a wide area instead of focused into a single point. The network must have millions of pathways running like roots to the surface that could reach ground level thousands of feet from the guide.”

“Surface burst EMP weapons,” said Mark. “Detonate it right on the ground to minimize collateral damage. The blast and the pulse won’t reach a buried nest, but it will wipe out all surface connections for miles around. The ultimate firewall.”

“Now that could work,” said Noah. “But we are back to nuclear if you want a sure kill. Chemical EMPs won’t do it. A low-yield nuclear EMP is probably going to be less damaging to Gaia than other atomic weapons, but will it be clean enough to avoid triggering the wrath of the goddess? Besides, how are you going to get your hands on nuclear weapons?”

“So what are we doing here?” interrupted Sarah. “I want to hear what can work.”

“We’re here to get answers,” said Noah. “Are these bunkers real or a bluff? Let’s start there.”

“Okay,” said Sarah. “How do we do that?”

“My assist estimated their blast door can be breached with three hundred and twelve 40mm rounds of concentrated fire into the seam between the rock and the door. Your Stryker can do that.”

“That’s three reloads of grenades,” said Sarah. “That’s a lot of high explosives. I like it.”

“What happens when they call for help?” asked Mark. “They have ties with Peacekeepers and who knows what other mercenaries.”

“I hope the storm troopers do show up,” said Noah.

“You hope
what?
” said Sarah. “Is this a suicide mission?”

“If storm troopers show up that means these bunkers are probably a bluff,” said Noah. “The hives can’t afford to let anyone find an empty bunker. If no help arrives then we know it’s probably a nest. The guides will sacrifice a nest to keep to their plans.”

“How can you be sure of any of this?” asked Mark.

“What we are fighting is a viral mutation that became self-aware. Each guide is wildly intelligent but also lacks creativity, which makes them predictable in some ways.”

“So we blast their door, then fall back and see what happens?” asked Sarah.

“We blast their door, their satellite farm, their radar motion detectors, their cameras, everything. We blind them and we scare the hell out of them, then we withdraw and wait,” said Noah. “We don’t let them know who is really attacking or why. If help doesn’t arrive, we kill them all and count the bodies to make sure it’s not a bluff. If help arrives, we kill their help or wait for them to leave, then make sure the nest is empty.”

Mark was surprised by his readiness—almost eagerness—to kill in cold blood, but this is what they’d come to do. Any actions were justified when balanced against all the warm blood that had been spilled directly and indirectly by the hives, including Pueblo Canyon. Their fingers had not been on most of the triggers, but the same could be said for Hitler. The hives were a cancer that had reached a terminal stage and become aggressive.

“Let’s go,” said Mark.

“I’m in,” said Sarah.

“Good,” said Noah. “Now, one last detail. I need to teach you both how to stop making so much noise on the n-web. You are like children screaming in a playground. Silence is not so important at the moment, but if the hive comes out to fight or we go down for a visit, you will need to be ghosts on the n-web.”

Mark was behind the wheel of the Stryker with the engine idling. He had stopped just shy of coming into view of the hive’s bunker. Liberating this Stryker had turned out to be the gift that kept giving. Not only did they have a powerful fighting vehicle, they had a terrific disguise that was also turning out to be a potent psychological weapon. As soon as Noah signaled them, Mark would pull the Stryker around the side of the hill and Sarah would open fire to blind the hive. The last thing they would see was a Peacekeeper Stryker attacking their bunker. It would leave them totally confused.

Maintaining silence on the n-web was difficult because it required constant focus. There were parts of the kinesthetic processors that liked to chatter and emote. The kinesthetic processor was largely what neurology defined as the peripheral nervous system: a complex neural network that connects to all the muscles and organs. One of the key functions of the kinesthetic processor was managing the subconscious routines and reflexes needed to perform complex physical tasks, such as walking or speaking. Modern neurology did not believe the peripheral nervous system possessed an awareness of its own. Modern neurology was wrong. Like the other processors, the kinesthetic processor was in fact a distinctly separate awareness inhabiting the body. To silence the chatter radiating out onto the n-web, the intellectual processor had to constantly distract and suppress some of the behaviors of the kinesthetic processor. Noah had said that with great discipline it was even possible to keep entire ideas from the god-machine and hold them in your own private vaults of awareness. Noah had also said maintaining silence became easier with practice. Right now, it was anything but easy. Mark had dedicated an entire parallel replication of his consciousness to the task. Quieting chatter while still being able to perform other activities seemed impossible, had he not been able to create mental clones. He could sense Sarah was straining to remain silent and succeeding remarkably at an impossible task. She was no longer shining brightly with data emissions. He was surprised to realize he missed her sunlight. They were still constantly pinging each other with memory capsules, but the communication was narrowly limited.

Mark was standing up with his head outside the driver’s hatch. His palms felt sweaty. Noah had to be in position by now. The ghost had taken one of the Milkor MGL 40mm grenade launchers and would open up from an adjacent hilltop. He would fire the first shots, taking out the satellite dish farm. That was their signal to open fire. Mark looked at the clouds changing color with the setting sun. A large hawk was circling in the distance. It was a misleading tranquility.

The rapid succession of explosive thumps and echoes vibrated the air and ground. Mark dropped into the driver’s seat, secured hatch, and got the beast rolling. In seconds they had rounded the hill. Sarah opened fire at a range of a 150 yards. The propellant charges of the grenades firing in short bursts of almost 400 per minute created a dance beat of destruction inside the Stryker. Mark stopped at a hundred feet. An ebb and flow of violent roaring, combined with the trembling of the ground, was like the chaos of being trapped in the heart of a terrible thunderstorm. It was if the gods themselves had gone to war. On the driver’s display Mark saw explosive flash after flash within an expanding cloud of debris.

The rhythm of firing changed. Now instead of bursts, a constant recoil and fire cadence had set in with long pauses every two and half minutes to reload. Mark knew the MK19 was now firing at its maximum stainable rate of forty rounds per minute. That meant Sarah had gone to work on the weak spot between the blast door and rock wall. The weapon was locked on target and violently gouging its way through feet of rock and thick steel.

After ten minutes of punishing fire there was silence. A stiff wind was quickly clearing the dust and smoke. Mark digitally zoomed in the driver’s display. The blast door was fully breached. What was left of it was flat on the ground inside the mine. Every bit of the hive’s communications and surveillance gear was gone. The front part of the fence and gate were also torn open by explosions.

“We did it!” shouted Sarah.

“Yes, you did,” yelled Mark. “Time to head for the hills.”

Mark selected the rear view for the driver’s display and saw Noah parked close behind them in his Land Cruiser. Sarah resumed firing but at a much slower rate. Mark swung the Stryker around and punched in the GPS coordinates for their hiding spot. The plan was to keep firing on the bunker while they pulled back. They wanted the hive to think the attack was ongoing for as long as possible. Mark knew Sarah had previously set up the GPS targeting mode of the CROWS to hit in and around the Army trucks. She fired in short bursts as they fled. He did not have to look to know each burst was hitting its target.

Mark pushed the Stryker up to a speed that felt reckless on the dirt road. They had to move fast. He doubted they would feel a thing if he hit a small tree. It was the big ones that worried him. The automatic tire-pressure system was adjusting inflation for maximum handling at different speeds. Sarah was now firing blind and with far less accuracy, using the indirect mode of the weapon. In a mile they would be out of range for the MK19. The plan was to retreat six miles to a ravine that had unusually heavy tree cover. They had gone over satellite images to make sure the spot was fully hidden. After camouflaging their vehicles at separate locations, they would stash their supplies in the woods and hike back at night to the mine. A camouflaged surveillance nest was waiting for them on a hill that had a clear line of sight to the bunker. The perimeter sentry tablet was in the nest running with their remaining detectors aimed at the mine entrance. It was there to capture any activity before they returned. The hardest part of this plan to swallow was if a military attack came, there was a chance they could lose their Stryker. Unlike Noah’s Land Cruiser, erasing the off-road tire tracks for their 36,000 pound monster was impossible.

Sarah Mayfair – Colorado – March 7, 0002 A.P.

Sarah felt anxious and angry. Daylight was fast approaching. Over thirty hours had elapsed since their attack and no cavalry had come to the rescue of this hive. This was the worst possible outcome. If Noah was right, this meant the hives were not bluffing. There was a guide and its worker ants living in that hole, and they along with their brethren were about to unleash a global nightmare. She was caught in the midst of a world war, and it seemed like only the three of them and the enemy knew it.

“They’re going to murder a billion people,” said Sarah.

Both Mark and Noah remained silent. They all knew it was true. Mark offered her some food. Sarah shook her head and pulled her long coat around her as the wind tugged at it. Over the last few hours she’d thought she’d heard whispers from this hive, the same as in Morristown. How could they know she was here? She’d kept a strong leash on her kinesthetic processor and knew it was completely silent. Maybe the whispers had just been the wind, or maybe the hives had other ways of sensing her presence. She was connected to them by blood. Some of her family could even be in that nest. Still, she wanted them all gone. She wanted them all exterminated.

“I think it’s time we go down there and prove Noah’s theory,” said Mark.

“I am right,” said Noah. “Dealing with a bluff would have been a welcome diversion compared to what we’re left with.”

Sarah was behind the wheel of the Stryker. Her feelings of dread had only worsened. She stopped the vehicle as the mine came into view. Mark and Noah were in the crew compartment. Mark was at the CROWS weapons station, ready to send any insects that came out of that nest straight to their artificial god. She zoomed in the driver’s display on the wrecked entrance. With the door flattened it looked like an iron drawbridge leading into hell. They were all convinced the mine had to be filled with lethal booby traps designed by a machine intelligence to stop exactly what they might have to do. Just walking in there could be suicide. They would have to set off grenades every 20 feet to disable or trigger the traps. The hive would know exactly what they were doing and their exact location. If Noah’s latest plan worked, none of them would have to step inside that funhouse. Unfortunately, Noah’s plan had a hole in it.

Sarah pulled forward slowly. Everything felt unreal at the moment. She had heard no more whispering since they’d left the surveillance nest. Air Truth was reporting six new kill-zones in small towns in North America. There had to be far more than that going unreported around the world. The USAG was still claiming these were hoaxes and bragging they would catch the deranged criminals responsible for these terrorist acts and see them executed.

At an ideal firing distance, eighty yards downrange from the entrance, Sarah engaged the parking brake. She climbed out of the driver’s seat and joined Mark and Noah, who were talking.

“How do you know we can locate enough of their air vents?” asked Mark.

“I don’t,” said Noah. “If we can’t cut off enough of their air supply, then they won’t have to evacuate and we’ll have to go in after them.”

Mark had a grim expression. Even without him radiating emotions, Sarah knew he was furious. Noah had led them to believe he had blueprints for this mine that showed all the vents and tunnels. A short time ago they’d found out his blueprints were too old to be completely trusted. Sarah felt everything was slipping off track and heading toward disaster.

“There’s no way we can find the rest of these nests before they unleash hell on us all,” said Sarah.

“Finding them is not the problem,” said Noah. “I have all their shelters mapped out along with all their aboveground dwellings. It is even easier now that we know they have started to go to ground in their shelters.”

“Are these maps any better than your blueprints?” snapped Mark.

“The maps are from the goddess and they are accurate,” said Noah. “The key is how to destroy all the hives before they have the capability of retaliating with a plague. Ideally, we need to knock them all down covertly and rapidly before any guide realizes how badly the tide has turned and decides victory in suicide is better than defeat. With annihilation looming, a guide might chose mutually assured destruction and strike back with the sloppy weapon they now have.”

“I get it. I understand Guides are emotional,” said Mark. “But am I the only one who noticed they didn’t try to use a kill-zone on us when we attacked them? They had to think we were Peacekeepers. Their control problems might be bigger than we suspect.”

“Maybe they don’t want to reveal their secret weapon,” said Sarah. “They think no one has linked them to these kill-zones. If they used their kill-zone weapon on Peacekeepers, it would be like grabbing a megaphone to announce their plans and show just how big a threat they are to everyone.”

“That makes sense,” said Mark.