Chapter 25 Dave
DAVE
At zero four fifteen hours on Tuesday, the Eight left the hotel and drove the Humvee with the headlights off because their enhanced vision didn't need them, and even though stealth was not necessary yet, it would be once they reached the deserted road leading to their destination.
As always, Number Seven drove, guiding the vehicle along the narrow service road that hugged the island's southern ridge before curving toward the coast.
The southeastern coastline was the closest thing the island had to nowhere.
No barracks, no training grounds, no infrastructure of any kind.
Just volcanic rock descending in jagged shelves toward cliffs that dropped straight into the ocean, the kind of sheer faces that made approach from the sea impossible and therefore made patrols unnecessary.
There was no point in wasting manpower guarding terrain that the ocean guarded for free.
It was also less than two kilometers from the harem complex, which sat on a similar stretch of cliff-lined coast.
Number Seven parked behind a rock outcropping about half a kilometer from the drop zone. The outcropping was large enough to hide the Humvee from the service road above, but anyone who came down the slope on foot could see it.
"I'll stay with the vehicle," Number Seven offered.
The collective agreed. Having someone with the Humvee meant they could leave quickly if something went wrong, and it also meant that if a patrol spotted the vehicle, there was a soldier present to explain what it was doing there rather than an empty Humvee sitting in a location where it had no business being.
The other seven proceeded on foot, spreading out across the retrieval zone in a pattern that covered the hundred-and-fifty-meter radius specified as the micro-drone's landing zone.
The terrain was rough underfoot, volcanic rock broken into uneven slabs and crevices with sparse, scrubby vegetation clinging to the gaps.
No paths. No signs that anyone had walked here in months, maybe years.
With the moon hidden behind cloud cover that had rolled in from the west, the predawn darkness was still thick.
Under normal circumstances, finding a matte black object the size of a cigarette lighter in this landscape would have been impossible.
But once the infrared beacon activated on impact, its pulse would be visible to them from up to two hundred meters out.
Provided that the micro drone landed where it was supposed to.
They put on their night goggles and scanned for the infrared pulse, but zero five hundred hours came and went, and they had seen nothing dropping from the sky nor a beacon.
The collective processed the delay analytically, without the corrosive anxiety that they would have experienced before ascending.
In less evolved entities, fear and stress translated into a hormonal cascade designed to motivate action in the face of uncertainty, but the Eight's hormonal responses were too muted for it to gain traction.
They registered the delay as a data point, assessed its implications, and continued scanning.
That didn't change the tactical reality, though, and every minute past the scheduled drop time increased the probability of detection.
The sky was already showing the first pale gray along the horizon, the stars fading as dawn crept toward them.
Within thirty minutes, the night-vision goggles would become useless, and the darkness that currently concealed their presence would dissolve.
Seven soldiers spread across a rocky coastline at sunrise would need an explanation far more creative than a routine perimeter inspection to justify their presence.
They didn't see the drone land, but at zero five twelve hours, Number Four caught a faint pulse at three-second intervals, barely visible even with his goggles.
Eighty meters south of the center of the coordinates, which was within the expected accuracy range but far enough from the primary search area that it would have taken much longer to find without the infrared signature.
The other six converged on Number Four's location.
The casing had landed in a crevice between two volcanic rocks, wedged at an angle that would have made it almost invisible even in daylight.
As one, they removed their night-vision goggles, and Number Four crouched to carefully work it free, then turned it over in his hands.
It was indeed matte black, and it felt warm from the beacon's heat output.
It was roughly the dimensions of a cigarette lighter, exactly as Onegus had described.
He opened it while the others watched.
Inside, nestled in foam padding that had absorbed the impact, were two components.
The receiver was astonishingly small, a curved sliver barely larger than a fingernail, designed to sit inside the ear canal.
The transmitter disc was flat and round, about the size of a coin, with an adhesive backing protected by a peel-away cover.
Both intact. No visible damage.
Number Four closed the casing, and the seven of them headed back to the Humvee. The sky was lighter now, the gray deepening into the first hints of blue, and the urgency of departure registered in the collective's awareness.
They were about fifty meters from the outcropping when headlights appeared on the service road above the ridge.
The seven kept walking because stopping would look even more suspicious than their being there, but eight minds snapped into tactical assessment.
A patrol vehicle, light utility, open-topped, carrying four soldiers. Descending the slope, it was on a track that would bring it within a hundred meters of the Humvee.
This stretch of coast was not on any standard patrol route. Which meant either a random sweep or someone had noticed the Humvee and reported it.
Through the collective awareness, Number Seven was informed about the approaching vehicle even though he couldn't see it yet.
We need to intercept them before they reach the Humvee, Number Three thought.
Number Seven stepped out and leaned against the driver's side door with his arms crossed, assuming the casual pose of a soldier waiting for his unit to return.
The patrol vehicle stopped. Its headlights illuminated Number Seven and the Humvee in harsh white light, and a figure climbed out of the passenger seat.
The commander was a mid-ranking officer. Not senior enough to be in Kolhood's inner circle, but experienced enough to recognize that this vehicle and the soldier leaning against it had no business on the southeastern cliffs at zero five fifteen hours.
As he walked toward Number Seven, he pulled out his radio.
The collective reacted instantly, but not fast enough.
"This is patrol seven-twelve," the commander said into the radio as he closed the distance. "Reporting contact with an unauthorized unit. Grid reference four-seven-niner. Time zero five sixteen hours. Over."
The radio crackled. "Copy, seven-twelve. Logged. Over."
The report was transmitted, received, and logged before the Eight could do anything to prevent it. The duty station operator had the information.
It was in the system.
Their background processing immediately began calculating damage. Who monitored the duty station logs? How quickly were they reviewed? Did Kolhood have people scanning for anomalies in Dave's movements?
The commander clipped his radio back to his belt and stopped three meters from Number Seven, his posture neither hostile nor deferential.
But as he glanced at the other seven approaching from the rocky terrain, the widening of his eyes and the tightening of his shoulders indicated that he recognized them as the eight enhanced soldiers who had been making rounds, conducting inspections, and reporting their findings to Losham.
"What's your unit doing out here at this hour?" he asked.
By then the seven had reached the Humvee, and the commander's eyes shifted to Number One because everyone on the island knew that he was the spokesman for the Eight.
"Perimeter inspection," Number One said. "We've noticed that this section of coastline has inadequate patrol coverage. We added it to our rotation to assess and report."
"Since when?"
"Since now."
The commander's eyes narrowed. He knew better than to argue over who was in charge of this area, but it was obvious that he wasn't satisfied with the explanation. "The southeastern cliffs aren't on any patrol route because there's nothing here to patrol. The terrain makes sea approach impossible."
"What's impossible today might become possible tomorrow," Number One said.
"New technologies are constantly being developed, and the enemies of the Brotherhood are spearheading the innovation.
Lord Losham wants a thorough assessment of every sector, including the ones that have been deemed low-risk in the past."
It wasn't really a lie since what Number One had said were thoughts that had occurred to the collective upon arrival at this deserted stretch of coast. The only part of the statement that wasn't true was Losham directing them to investigate here.
The commander studied him for a moment. His surface thoughts were accessible to the collective, and what Number One found there was not suspicion so much as wariness.
The man didn't think they were up to something.
He thought they were strange, which was the default reaction of most who encountered the Eight. Strange, dangerous, and best avoided.
"I wasn't informed about any expanded patrol schedule," the commander said.
"You wouldn't have been. The idea is to find areas in need of improvement and report them to Lord Losham without those involved trying to make everything look good."
That was true, and the commander knew it.
On Losham's orders, the Eight bypassed the regular military protocol, which was one of the reasons that Kolhood and the other brothers resented them. They operated outside the system, answered to no one except Losham, and their activities were opaque to everyone else.
The commander's wariness settled into resignation. "Understood. Do you need anything from us?"
"No. We're finished up here."
They applied the thrall, and all four soldier minds received the same adjustment, layered over their existing memories of the encounter like a fresh coat of paint over graffiti.
Routine encounter. Nothing unusual. The Eight were conducting a standard perimeter check. It was reported to the duty station.
That was the end of it. Nothing worth a second thought.
The commander returned to the patrol vehicle, and then it drove off, climbing the slope and disappearing over the ridge, its headlights fading into the brightening sky.
"The duty station log," Number Three said.
"It stays," Number One replied. "Going to the duty station to alter the record creates another encounter, and another anomaly. We leave it."
"The entry will be buried among dozens of routine patrol reports from the night shift," Number Three added. "Unless someone is actively scanning for patterns in our movements, it won't get flagged."
"Kolhood's people might be doing exactly that," Number One said.
The problem was that they couldn't eliminate this vulnerability without creating a bigger one.
"We tell Losham about our sojourn to this area during our morning briefing," Number Two said.
"We will frame it as an initiative. We identified a gap in the patrol coverage and took it upon ourselves to address it.
If Kolhood's people find the log entry and bring it to him, Losham can confirm that he was aware.
We will recommend a new patrol route for the area and give Losham the same explanation we gave the commander.
This coast shouldn't be assumed to be inaccessible because we are not aware of a way to do it.
Others might have equipment the Brotherhood has not heard about yet. "
It was a patch, not a fix, but it was the best available option, and the collective moved on.