Chương 100: 2.41 The Plan

Hector pulled the deadfall closer to the other two he'd already arranged, one atop the other and open like a V on the ground, with the wide part facing the marshy woods. He pulled the third atop the others, using its still-leafy canopy as a roof of sorts. The rest of the team was already working in there—mostly Mathews and Freddy—digging down a few feet into the soft, worm-filled loam of the river valley.

They were about a klick from the rift, and the hook titan that sat staring at it, and though they were still close to the woods, Hector was confident there'd be no predators coming their way—not with the blood-soaked battle scene drawing scavengers from all corners, and not with a hook titan so near. The giants were the undisputed apex predators of the rift world, at least on land, and even a pack of reapers would keep their distance.

As he positioned the tree over their heads, dragging it as quietly as he could, Mathews said, "Can you knock over a couple more? Make it look like one of those titans wandered through here." Hector grunted his agreement. The rescue party would certainly send up drones, scanning the rift area, and it wouldn't do if they thought they had anything to investigate near the hidden dugout they were constructing. //Your system update is imminent. You should sit down and hydrate.

// Hector grunted again, walked over to the packs Paige and Willa had set down, and fished out an electrolyte pouch. He sat with his back to one of the trunks, across from Kristy. She'd put her helmet back on, but he could tell she was uncomfortable—Paige was tending to the deep, round wounds on her legs. Her trauma nanites had stopped the bleeding, but some of the fish had torn large chunks of skin and muscle away—wounds beyond the bugs' ability to regenerate.

"They'll fix you up in no time back home. Some synthetic tissue grafts and a proper infusion through a blood processor will do wonders," Paige said, gently dabbing some gel into one of the wounds.

"Just spray some foam in there and—""No, hon," Paige said.

"It's too rigid when it dries. Trust me." Hector glanced at Ling. The man's foam-covered wrist was still cradled to his chest as he stared, seemingly relaxed, at the cloud-filled sky. He was about to ask him how he was, but then a wave of vertigo struck him and his vision tunneled. A moment later, as the world grew bright again, Evie opened a new window on his AUI: //Pathway revisions complete. Berserk has been converted to Shadow Step.

Pathway bandwidth has been conserved, and the replacement ability has been fully integrated. Shadow Step: With a surge of aura, briefly enter the veil and reappear a short distance away. Your destination is determined by your point of focus; accuracy improves with proficiency. Cost: 35 aura. // Damn. Not cheap. //Consider the strategic power of the ability, and the fact that your aura pool is still relatively low level. // Yeah, I know. Still, I had hoped it would be more valuable now.

"You okay, Hector?" Mathews asked, looking up from the pit she and Freddy were digging.

"Just a breather. I'll get those trees handled in a minute."

"How about the titan?" Kristy asked, her voice hoarse and breathy as it escaped the grille on her helmet. Paige looked at him.

"You're not really going to—""I'm thinking about it," Hector said, waving off the biologist's concern.

"Why can't we just hide until the rift shifts?" Willa asked.

"Let the rescue team deal with that thing!"

"Oh, they'll probably handle it," Mathews said, leaning on her short, meter-long shovel.

"Not before five or ten people die, though."

"You know how it works," Paige said, turning her transparent facemask toward Willa.

"It's all down to the fact that the rift can't handle too much mass at once. The teams have to travel in a line. If that rift titan goes on the offensive when the first people arrive—""It would do a lot of damage," Hector finished, grunting as he hauled himself to his feet.

"I'll finish the trees, and then I'll lure that thing away…at least." As he walked away, it wasn't hard to hear Willa say, "Someone can't kill a titan—not without artillery, right?" Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

"Well, no," Mathews replied, "that's not right. Aura users kill them all the time—just not the kinds of aura users we've got out in Kessler's Reach. The higher-tier Imperial raid units, though?"

"Like the Invicti," Freddy said.

"Right. Well, they…" Hector tuned them out as he picked a tree that was already listing toward the river to cut down. He jogged over to it, amazed at how well he was doing. The others were all hurting; their filtration systems were just about shot, and nobody had been able to get truly restful sleep in days—not for lack of trying. Hector, though, despite everything he'd been through, or maybe because of it, was feeling great.

His breathing was clear, his body felt strong, and he'd been eating and drinking plenty, thanks to Evie's constant reminders. He wondered how his adaptation to the rift world's environment would affect him when they crossed over. He hoped his "Environmental Adaptability 2" would work both ways. With any luck, he'd just be a bit uncomfortable for a while as his body adjusted.

Squatting near the base of the tree, he summoned his Aura Blade and hacked several jagged, angular cuts into the trunk; he didn't want it to look too clean. The tree started to fall from its own weight, but he leaned into it, finishing the job. After scanning the area to ensure he hadn't attracted any attention, he moved on to another one. While he worked, Hector thought about what they'd do after the rescue team crossed through the rift.

If things went according to plan, they'd pick up the faint distress beacon coming from the mountains, and they'd head out that way. Transmissions couldn't cross through the rift, so they'd leave someone behind—maybe a small team—to wait for comms that they'd relay through the rift, either with a drone or in person. Hector figured he'd capture and question that team, hopefully just one or two people. He wanted to know what their orders were—kill, capture, or simply rescue.

He also needed to know what kind of welcoming committee would be on the other side. Once they had some intel, he and the others could decide what their next move would be. The only thing he wasn't sure about was the part where he confronted the comms team; if they got a warning out to the rescue party, they might come back prematurely and force a much larger confrontation. //I believe Freddy will be able to help with that. // Yeah?

Hector watched as his second tree fell, crashing into a third and knocking it partway down. //Yes. His suit is equipped with a short-range jamming device. // Ah, shit. Of course it is! Satisfied with the trees and the progress on the blind, Hector looked toward the rift and the massive shadow that hunched before it on the near side of the river.

"No sense putting it off," he muttered, looking at the countdown timer on his AUI: 14: 11: 32. He strode back to the blind and looked down over the tree trunk at the others.

"Paige, can you and Willa work on the branches? Fluff them up and weave them together so the pit's harder to see." He nodded toward the hole where Freddy was currently sprawled out, feeding an electrolyte pouch into his suit's intake tube.

"Yeah, of course." Paige turned her face upward, examining the leaf-covered branches.

"I heard the trees falling," Mathews commented.

"Yeah." Hector stepped closer to the pit, studying Freddy's gold-and-black armor.

"You got a jammer on that suit, Freddy?"

"Huh?" He turned his helmet toward Hector.

"Yeah—good for two-hundred meters." Hector nodded.

"Good." He looked over the tree boughs at the rift again.

"Well, I guess I should get this over with."

"Why don't you take my rifle?" Mathews asked, nodding toward her gear stacked beside Kristy.

"Post up about two klicks away and shoot his ass, draw him away and then use your aura trick to hide." Hector frowned; he'd thought of similar ideas, of course, but he always came to the same conclusion: "He'll just come back."

"You think he's that obsessed?" Freddy asked. Hector nodded.

"He's been watching the damn thing for days. I think he knows. He's waiting for it to shift, and he wants to see what comes through."

"Are they that smart?" Kristy asked, surprising Hector; he'd thought she'd fallen asleep.

"They're quite intelligent—similar to Old Earth primates," Paige said.

"And a heck of a lot meaner," Freddy added.

"He's waiting for a snack."

"Or maybe he wants to go through it," Mathews said, climbing out of the pit to join Hector, observing the distant titan.

"Doesn't matter what he wants," Hector said.

"He can't tell us, and we can't afford to wait and see." With a sigh, he began unbuckling the remains of his body armor and equipment belt. The gear would only slow him down.

"Do they heal like reapers?" Kristy asked. Paige shook her head.

"Not like reapers, no. But the sheer mass of that creature… Hector, do you really think you can bring it down?"

"You tell me—does the damn thing have Achilles tendons?"

"In the literal sense?" Hector nodded.

"Well, yes, their physiology is roughly mammalian in nature. They have musculoskeletal systems similar to Earth-based animals. I'm sure there's a tendon there near their heels, though it would be exceptionally robust. I'd expect it to be at least twenty or thirty centimeters thick!" Hector knew she was right; the titans were humanoid, but they were damn thick creatures; they had legs that made an elephant's seem twig-like. He piled his damaged gear between the loose dirt and the tree trunk.

"Might as well bury that; no sense giving the drones something to scan. We'll put the rest of your gear in the pit with us."

"Seriously?" Kristy rasped.

"You're going to fight a titan half-naked?" Hector shrugged.

"Think that busted-up armor would protect me from that thing?"

"I just want to know why the fuck the bugs aren't eating you alive," Mathews growled, jerking her shovel out of the mound and getting back to work; she didn't expect an answer. Hector started to clamber out of the blind, but Paige hastily asked, "What if you, um—""Don't come back?" Hector smiled at her.

"Just follow the plan. Let the rescue party leave, give them twenty minutes or so, and then use Freddy's jammer on whoever stays back to manage comms." He jerked his thumb at Mathews.

"The commander can figure it out from there."

"You damn well better come back," Mathew said, flinging a load of wormy black soil onto Hector's abandoned armor. He climbed over the rift-facing log before calling back, "That's the plan."