MARS - Red Rising

ChapterUno : Search for the beacon in the wilderness

Chapter 1

The gray skies wept blood and iron.

The team moved stealthy, almost like shadows amid the vegetation and undergrowth under the forest canopy of the eerily quiet jungle in the northern quadrant of the sss as the clock ticked closer to midday and the black radioactive frost started drifting on the dying flora. Soon, in a couple of hours or so, it will be almost pitch black with very dense darkness that even radio frequency signals cannot be transmitted effectively and cause messages to be distorted. They have to move fast!

Equipped with neural helmets, its members, six elite delta force shock troops.

and four AI augmented cyborgs of the latest model almost noiselessly padded like cats along the damp trail, inching ever closer to their objective., which blinked as a welcoming green icon on their angular helmet vision screens. They were now on the last leg of the perilous journey since being disgorged by a stealth nuclear submarine a couple of hours before daybreak in the northern shore of the sss and carved a path through the still thick vegetation of the jungle led by a satellite linked scout and a pathfinder crawler drone. The insertion was almost called-off or at least planned to be diverted through another, but longer routed due to hundreds of hundreds sharks, and swordfishes in the bay area if not for the submarine's timely installation of bio frequency hostile disruption fields that the sub's commander Capt. Eliza Rowan ordered activated to clear beach head quadrant of radioactive sharks and venomous sea urchins.

A heavy, gray mist blanketed the sub as it partially surfaced to detach the troop carrier pod containing the expeditionary team tower as fast as possible and slid under the waves as soon as the vessel made a shore landing and disgorged the field personnel. The pod's AI then directed it back to the sea to reattach once more to the sub's hull until the extraction notice. It was an operation with a meagre chance of success and Capt Rowan returned to the deeper part of the Pacific on patrol mode while staying within satellite signal visibility arc. Given the importance of the mission, Alpha Pentagon had strict instructions that Rowan's sub had to linger in area for no less than a week until a satellite beams the signal to retrieve the team, or what will be left of it after the mission.

Ever anxious to get back to their perimeter defense lines in the Northwester Pacific sector, Rowan could only hope that the emergency mission, so sudden and planned within the shortest possible time frame, will be successfully concluded in the soonest if they could hope to be back in action in the Oriental seas. But she knew that the top brass had other things in mind, it was to be a high stakes operation, and given her very close proximity to the mainland, her sub was the one ordered to deliver the package of covert ops shrouded under layers of encrypted data sent by a rudimentary photonic transmission network. Initial reports hinted of a massing of Chinese and Korean battle assets in the south china and philippine seas and the NorthAmerican pacific fleet was already overstretched as it tried to plug gaps in the Bering and Antartatic lines to stem the tide of hostile Middel eastern and central asian submersible drones that were prowling the marine fronts of the Northern Hemisphere.

Rowan had then retired to her cabin and proceeded to the emergency data command console where she requested the on board server through an audio encrypted code to review the archived action scenes just recently downloaded from the event observer harpy eagle bio-drones hovering above the inserted team on this part of the vast sss.

The sub's main bridge and deck was a controlled bedlam of activity as the day-active shift crew went about their assigned tasks and Rowan could feel the undercurrent of tension as she passed men and women glued on banks of LED display monitors as they viewed status data flowing through the screens. Others were at control panels of the upkeep systems if the vessel. The rest, the most skilled and scientific crew she did not immediately see now, were tending to the most critical components, the engine and electricity rooms and the nuclear reactors. She had expected them to be fully alert at this stage of the mission. In fact, she had ordered a scenario drill a week before in anticipation of a special order direct from the Pentagon even as the world exploded in war and the nuclear exchange commenced. Though none of her ninety six subordinate personnel save for a handful of senior officers knew of the real nature of their mission, most of the men and women were aware that it was a very important matter that may even tip the scales of the unfolding worldwide conflict.

The global war been raging for almost a month now. Most of the leading cities in Europe, Asia as well as in North America had been blasted into radioactive ruins and pitiful shells of what have once been vibrant metropolitan centers teeming with tens of nillions! It was so hard to think about that brutal fact. The greatest, most beautiful cities are gone in an instant. London, Rome, Moscow, Stalingrad, Berlin, Warsaw, Prague and so many others in Asia and some handfuls in Africa and South America; reduced to smoldering piles of irradiated rubble. But a surprising note brought some cheers to humanity's survivors. Rome and Paris, for some reasons few could fathom, were spared from the blasting rain of the dammed warheads. Maybe the great Oriental despot who started all this admired these historical cities that he delflected his warheads from hitting them. Whatever the reasons, they can only guess at the real intentions. But for the time being, Paris and Rome survived, although millions of terrified citizens hastily evacuated out of those cities and more were streaming out in tens of thousands day by hopeless day. Not that anyone was safer anyplace else, the countrysides were torched and bleached by the firestorms caused by the thermonuclear explosions over the urban areas and major population and industrial centres lit in the opening salvos of the armaggedon. The bare hills, plains and mountains were now filled with holes and man made caves as the millions of hungry, cold and desperate masses dug makeshift bunkers or foxhole to escape the radioactive rains.

It had been so bitter. For the first time since the last good war in the early quarter of the 20th century, the United States had been spaced from destruction. But now almost everyone lost a near relative-parents, siblings, cousins soon as the ICBMs penetrated whatever flimsy defenses were installed and hurled their deadly packages onto the pre programmed targets and incinerated millions upon millions of innocents who were simply going about their daily lives and not privy to the ambitions and greed of the most world leaders who plunged the planet to its destruction as each vied to become sole emperor of Earth-the first and only unifiyer of mankind.

Rowan was momentarily distracted from her thoughts by the beeping amber runes in the top right corner of the air screen of the satellite receiver terminal as it downloaded the event scenes of the mission progress sent by the field drones hovering over the theater zone. The initial data packets have started to arrive. Propelled by the boosters to augment the VLF transmissions that pierced through the deep waters to make contact with the sub's hull sonar sensors, the drone reports passed through the layered security protocols of the sub's networks that processed the feeds instantatneously and decoded by video and audio modulators to be relayed on the view screens of the officers' bridge.

The first footage sections showed events that transpired in the time frame of seven to nine in the morning where the beach head was being secured and the main body waiting for the all clear signal of the forward drone scouts to advance a hundred metres into the jungle.

All is quite well and going smoothly according to plan, Rowan surmised and the sub commander was hopeful that the operation will be concluded and the covert team will soon be back for coffee and hot meal on the sub before night fall.

Though there is not much to see now in this sector of the sss due to the growing radioactive fallout, still the jungle seemed to retain substantial vegetation and for the time being, quite protected in its own ecosystem, its humidity still sustaining the forests and rays of sunlight piercing through the thin dust in the atmosphere to provide sustainance to the region, at least one of the remaining Earth's precious forests holding out against the vast radioactive cloud suffocating the planet and blotting out the life giving sun.

Rowan's eyes instinctively flicked toward the main screens showing the main bridge of the sub where the senior officers were supervising the driver crews as they maneuvered the vessel through the dark depths some 300 metres below the sea surface.