Ravens of Eternity

25 Hell Week, Pt Eva and Chengli willingly went on the reconnaissance run, and even brought three cadets each. They didn’t mind all that much that they were doing this, it was just that there were others who were more proficient at it.

Although they were relatively well-versed in stealth and recon, Sunflower had practical military experience, and that was too valuable a resource to let sit. So they invited her to join them as a force multiplier.

She quickly joined the team with three cadets of her own and offered her expertise whenever she could. The more they understood about the situation, the better their decisions could be, simple as that.

The first thing they did was kick up a cloud of dust around themselves. They wanted to get a nice, thick layer of it to help keep them camouflaged. Whether or not this was helpful against drones wasn’t really an issue.

What was important was that they attempted to disguise themselves with as many means as possible.

The enemy’s base was located north-north-west from their encampment, so they decided to give it a wide berth and scout out its perimeter before they headed closer in.

They first turned east and went out four kilometers before turning north. Then once they were exactly east of the enemy base, they started to circle it.

Eva scanned her surroundings but didn’t see much in the area surrounding the base. No patrols, or even signs of patrols. At least, not this far out.

The recon team slowly spiraled their way inward until they reached a distance of roughly 1500 meters. It was at this point that they had found patrol tracks.

.....

They all scanned them, but it was Sunflower who gave the breakdown. Her expertise in her field shone through as she spoke.

“Walking patrol of a half dozen bipedal mecha, lightly equipped,” she said. “Appears that they do this twice per cycle. Mmmaybe at random intervals.”

Eva looked around and spotted a large, rocky outcropping in the distance, 1200 meters to the west of the base. She noted its location and sent it to the others.

“Let’s head there,” said Eva. “Maybe we can get a better vantage point.”

“Agreed,” said Sunflower. “Low and slow.”

Everyone lowered their power output to hide their signatures and stealthily headed towards the large jutting rocks.

They came in warily, with Eva’s team up front to take any damage, and Chengli right behind to repulse any surprises. Sunflower was asked to stand back and retreat immediately if they ran into anything.

Luckily, they didn’t. Nothing major, anyway.

A quick scan revealed a sensor, but Sunflower had one of her cadets hack it to erase their existence. Or perhaps, it would’ve been more accurate to say that they made it report no abnormalities no matter what it actually detected.

The outcropping was actually much larger than they had realized, and were able to completely conceal all of their mechs without much difficulty. There was even room for plenty more.

Eva, Chengli, and Sunflower then went up to the top and peeked over the edge at the base. They had superb line-of-sight to every building on the base and so they maximized their sensors to get a better look.

The buildings themselves were nondescript, but easily identifiable based on their size and signature readings. There was a large hangar, most likely multi-storied under the surface. There were multiple buildings surrounding it; some repair yards, munitions depots, and armories.

There were other, less important buildings that mimicked facilities for personnel, such as bunks, mess halls, fuel storage, and such. Since there weren’t any living things here other than themselves, they could mostly be ignored.

At the southern end of the base was a group of entrenched squadron of mecha. They were furiously defending their position from another entrenched squadron of mecha roughly 600 meters south.

Both groups looked just like the training mecha they were all currently piloting, except they were conveniently painted with red and blue stripes to delineate their opposition to each other.

Further scans showed that not a single living human occupied any of the mechs, and they were all firing blanks. They were all remote-controlled drones, which meant that this little battle scene was simply ambiance.

Eva recalled that they had heard the sounds of battle when they arrived, and wondered who was already in the heat of things. Little did she know it was smoke and mirrors.

She reasoned that this must have been a scripted part of this scenario to help push the realism of their experience during Hell Week. Sort of like mood lighting, except for battlefields. They really spared no expense.

But then again, war had always been such a profitable industry.

She looked at them closer, and saw that the red mecha had a second rifle strapped on each of their backs, and scanners indicated they were loaded with lethal rounds. In contrast, the blues didn’t.

It only took a second for her to figure out that the reds had lethal capability in this fake skirmish, which gave them the upper hand no matter what. Since blue drones only had nonlethal rifles, they couldn’t be relied on to help defend, so reinforcing their position did literally nothing but cause losses.

‘Maybe we could rearm them somehow,’ Eva thought.

They continued their scans on the base and noted a mass of mecha in formation at the east end of it. They looked primed and ready to go at a moment’s notice.

Their design was just like all of the other mecha they had seen so far. They too had a red stripe to denote they were, in fact, the “bad guys”. They appeared to be equipped with both rifles and swords, and were lightly armored.

The group had surmised that these were basically a fast flanking unit, and they were likely dispatched to quickly reinforce or attack a position whenever necessary.

They had also detected many signals to the north of the base, and when they scanned closer, they saw multiple mechs with large barrels mounted on each of their shoulders. They were also partially dug into the ground, likely to reduce their recoil.

Luckily, the cannons’ maximum range fell short of their encampment, though they still seemed perilously close. Any frontal attack would result in heavy shelling and bombardment.

There was also a large number of mecha grouped in wings of six all over the place. They patrolled between buildings, in closed loops, around the perimeter, everywhere. Although they weren’t all out at once, and a good majority of them were in the hangar most of the time, it was easy to tell that their numbers were great.

Sunflower estimated that there were at least three hundred mecha in the base, with two hundred of them activated at any given time. They would need to scout out that hangar to be absolutely sure.

Not a single one of them was keen to do that. It sounded like suicide.

Before they could even think to look for weaknesses in the layout, Sergeant Elyn came on Eva and Chengli’s comms displays. Her face was a little grim.

“Squad leaders,” she said. “Apologies for interrupting. I’ve got some news. I’ve just completed a headcount and noted that we’re two cadets short. Mecha and all.”

Eva thought back to when they departed, and she was sure that everyone was with them. Minus their three dropouts, all forty-seven of them left the mecha bunker. Did they peel away when they weren’t looking? Or did they get lost on the way? If so, why didn’t they say anything?

Whatever the case, it wasn’t something she could deal with now.

“Were they carrying our supplies?” asked Eva.

“Thankfully, no. Both were equipped for long-range engagements, so keep that in mind. We’ll keep our ears and eyes open, but we should consider them washed out.”

“Thanks sergeant,” said Chengli, “keep us posted.”

“Stay safe,” she replied. “Elyn out.”

“What do you think?” Chengli asked Eva. But she just shook her head.

“Let’s stay focused,” she replied.

They quickly packed up and went back to the camp to inform unit leader Grizz of their findings. When Eva, Chengli, and Sunflower walked into the command tent, they noted the rather lazy atmosphere.

Grizz and a couple of squad leaders stood around the holo-display talking loudly about strategy.

Eva simply rolled her eyes at them. She wasn’t any kind of strategist, but talking strategy before they even had intel was just foolishness.

“Freya reporting in,” she said. “We have packaged up our intel, ready for your perusal.”

Before they could say anything, Eva transmitted the data to the holo-display through her DI. It quickly populated with all of the information they had collected.

Grizz’ eyes went wide as he saw the base laid out before him.

He looked around at all the different mecha, buildings, and patrols as his mind spun in deep thought. He even stroked at his scraggly beard a little.

“Okay, I’ve got a good plan,” he said. “Everyone can go retire for the rest of the cycle. I’ll put something together for our attack next cycle.”

Sunflower was completely dumbfounded. Grizz was going to develop the strategy by himself? And they would attack in the next cycle? Was this idiocy or genius?

Before she could say anything in protest, Eva chimed in.

“We’ll leave it to you, then,” she said.

Then, she spun around and left. Chengli was pretty much right behind her, so Sunflower simply bit her lip and dashed out after them.

“What great subordinates!” Grizz said happily. “They left without needing to be told to leave!”

Outside, Sunflower caught up to Eva and Chengli. She was red-faced from what she had experienced. At first she had thought to give Grizz the benefit of the doubt, but his actions had made it clear that he was simply a narcissist!

He was making battle plans without knowing what their full capabilities as a unit were. Not only that, but he was doing it without the rest of the squad leaders. And he was trying to rush it!

That was total idiocy!

“Did you hear what he said?” she asked the two of them. “I know we said we’d give him a shot, but after what he said... You’re still gonna go through with it?”

Eva shrugged. Dealing with people like that was easy. Let them do what they want, that way when they screwed up, they took all the heat. The only problem was that it was Hell Week. His decisions could lead to their deaths, so they had to act, but do so under the radar.

“It doesn’t matter what he does,” Chengli said. “As long as we brace ourselves and minimize our collateral damage.”

“And it doesn’t matter what we tell him,” Eva added. “People like that just don’t listen. Or, rather, the only person they listen to is themselves. There’s no doubt that he’ll make an idiotic strategy. It’ll be our jobs to counter it without making him look good.”

Sunflower sighed.

“So what do we do?” she asked.

Chengli said, “Let’s get all the squad leaders who dislike Grizz together and come up with something.”

Sunflower nodded, and immediately veered off to gather the others, determination etched on her face.

Eva and Chengli headed off to their hangar, where they informed their squadron of what was going on. They didn’t look too happy about it at all.

It was about an hour later that Sunflower came in, and she was accompanied by nine of the squad leaders. Many squadrons had more than one squad leader. Cadets were only given as much responsibility as they could handle, so sometimes it was necessary to share the burden of leadership.

Most squadrons had three, and almost none of them had just one squad leader. Well, except for Grizz’ squadron. He couldn’t handle sharing power.

The squad leaders had a few of their cadets come with them to help take notes, so the leadership group found themselves surrounded by dozens of cadets as they had their talk. Needless to say, it was enlightening for many.

Eva, Chengli, and Sunflower gave the rundown of the intel they had gathered, and even had their cadets fill in a few details here in there. And although they didn’t have the benefit of a holo-display, every squad leader had a great picture of what they had in store for them.

“To top it all off,” Chengli said, “our fearless leader’s in his tent right now, creating the strategy to take the base.”

Some of the squad leaders couldn’t help but shake their heads when they heard that.

“And he said we were gonna take it in the next cycle!” added Sunflower.

.....

That tipped them all over the edge. Next cycle? That wasn’t just reckless idiocy, it was complete lunacy! Going in unprepared would get them all killed!

“We should go mutiny right now,” said Eva. “Let’s knock him out and get a real plan going.”

“Let’s not bother,” said one of the squad leaders. “We only decided to listen to him because he was a loudmouth and a bully. We’re all here now, making a real plan, so let’s just keep going. We can lock him up tomorrow.”

The others murmured in agreement.

It made sense. Grizz was only a problem if they listened to him at all.

“There is an issue, though,” said Sunflower. “We need his cadets, as well as the squad leaders under his thumb. There’s no way we can face what’s out there with only our cadets. There’s six squadrons here, total. And we only lead four of those.”

Eva sighed. Sunflower was right. They had less than two hundred cadets, and they were facing an enemy that was at least three hundred strong. If they simply cut off the heads from those squadrons, they’d get severely demoralized.

They had spent nearly a month with them, trained with them, grew with them. They wouldn’t have been very useful in battle without their leaders, it was as simple as that.

“Damnit,” said Eva. “It can’t be helped. We need to convince them to give up Grizz’ plan. We need them willing and on our side.”

Sunflower frowned.

“I really wanted you guys to beat him up!” she cried.

If only Miko were here, Eva thought to herself. Then an idea flashed through her mind.

“Who’s the best hacker here?” she suddenly asked.

But before anyone could answer, the base’s alarms started to blare, and the long drawn-out sound of the emergency klaxons filled the air.

“What’s going on?!” cried some of the cadets.

Eva immediately hopped up on her feet and got her cadets’ attention without hesitation. Behind the sounds of the sirens, she had heard the all-too-familiar sound of cannonfire.

The encampment was under attack!

“Gear up! Gear up!” she yelled. “On the double! It’s time to ride!!”

“Yes, squad leader!” yelled the cadets as they leapt into action.