The body of the disc was split open like a fruiting mushroom, revealing an interconnected network of gills, stalks and bulbs within. The inside was its own kind of forest, one overflowing with activity as its denizens went about their daily business. All of this was hidden from the sun beneath the top part of the disc, an umbrella-shaped cap whose inside glowed like an immense street lamp.
“That’s a city?” Nikitin asked in awe.
Charlie nodded. “Is it really that different than Manhattan?”
“Yeah. Looks like something you find growing in your sock.”
Jack raised his binoculars and tried to take it all in, but there was just too much to absorb. Charlie was right in a way. The details were foreign, but the shape was the same. It was a living city, with its own congested traffic and bustling neighborhoods. Jack could only see the very edge of it, but he could tell there was a lot going on inside.
Charlie started snapping pictures through his visor, while Jack brainstormed ways to get a closer look. They weren’t going to learn anything useful from the park across the street. He wanted to get into the backyard, or maybe break into the basement if he could.
“I can’t figure it out. How the hell do we get in?” Jack asked.
“I dunno,” Lisa said. “Anyone remember to bring an armor division?”
Nikitin snapped his finger in mock disappointment. “Drat! Left it in my other pants.”
“Yeah, yeah, yuck it up,” Jack said dryly. He wondered why he was always stuck with such smart mouths.
“Usually, you just do like the Romans do.”
“Nice thinking, Charlie,” Nikitin said. “Should we do like the four-armed Romans, or the six-armed ones that float?”
“Point taken.”
The team moved on when Charlie was done taking pictures, keeping to the thick bush at the edges of the alien civilization. They didn’t move particularly fast, and the circle around the city was over sixty kilometers in circumference, so it began to feel like they weren’t getting anywhere.
They got better views of the crops and the creatures tending them. Fields were laid out in rows, filled with unfamiliar plants. Agriculture had never been Jack’s strong suit, and he thought most vegetables looked kind of alien to begin with, so the fields were at best unsurprising. Of more interest were the creatures tilling the fields, which looked like short, squat versions of the walkers, but with large blades they dragged through the soil. Jack imagined they were also vehicles driven by the skinny white pilots.
The team stopped after a klick, and something in the distance caught Charlie’s eye. He flipped down his mask and dialed up his optics. “Hey, how about Romans in hooded robes?”
Jack brought his binoculars back up, and he could just barely make out a small group headed out from the city. There were eight of them walking in single-file, dressed in graphite-colored hooded robes, like futuristic Franciscan monks. “Well, I’ll be damned,” Jack said.
The monks walked out to a cobblestone circle surrounded by meticulously arranged plants, stood at the edge and began to pray. At least, Jack assumed they were praying. They put their arms out and looked up toward the sun, and just stood that way for a little over twenty minutes.
“That might just work,” Jack said as he watched. He turned away from the prayer circle and started looking for nearby cover. He was looking for a place to stage an ambush, and he found it, a thin gouge in the land, maybe a creek, that ran within ten meters of the circle. “Let’s consider this a top priority. I want someone watching that circle whenever the sun’s up.”
They stayed and observed until the sun sat low on the horizon, then finally left back for the base camp
Chapter 35:
Civilian
The alien monks’ unerring patterns made them easy targets. During daylight, they came out every three hours to perform their ceremony, which lasted for twenty-two minutes and thirty seconds. Their movements and positions were always precisely the same.
Long distance observation revealed more of their kind in the city, dressed in identical robes and always traveling in groups of eight. Jack decided the robes would make ideal disguises, and he set his sights on acquiring a set.
After a week of watching, the team moved into the nearby ravine, waited for the right moment and then struck in the middle of the monks’ prayer session. They did it with knives, their work intentionally messy in order to make it look like a wild animal attack, then dragged the corpses back into the wilderness. The bodies left a trail of amber blood that glimmered in the sun.
In the forest, they stripped the monks and left them for the scavengers to dispose of. They turned out to be yet another new species, not particularly humanoid but close enough for the robes to fit. They were bipedal with backwards hinged knees. Each arm split into two forearms at the elbow, both ending in identical four fingered hands. The head was just a bulb at the top of two thin stalks, carrying a pair of eyes and nothing else. Their mouth and ears were instead located on their slender torso, which was also where their brains were housed.
The fact none of this shocked Jack revealed that his threshold for weird shit had jumped a few notches.
A squad of jackrabbits came out to investigate the disappearance, and they sniffed around and chattered over the evidence for hours before returning to the city. A new choir of monks replaced the originals the very next day, but were now protected by pairs of bored looking jackrabbits who stood off to the side and kept watch.
Back at the base camp, couriers arrived from the North carrying new orbital scans with improved detail. Most were focused on five hot spots arranged in a wide circle around the city’s center. Command assumed they were generators, and they were marked as high priority targets. There was no info about how the generators worked, but their destruction would deal a significant blow, and maybe cause a chain reaction that could take down the entire colony.
Orders were orders. Jack didn’t know how well the disguises would hold up under scrutiny, so he planned the infiltration and bombing all in one fell swoop without a test run. If they were discovered, they wouldn’t get a second chance. Worse, they’d have the enemy actively searching for them, making any operations in the region significantly more difficult.
On the day of the mission, all forty Bravos gathered at the edge of the wilderness and waited for nightfall. Only eight were going in, while the others secured their escape route, and waited to provide cover fire if things went bad.
The infiltrators were broken into two teams. Jack lead the fire-support team, which included Charlie, Nikitin and Albright, armed with assault rifles and frag grenades, while Trash headed up the demolitions team, each carting around bricks of plastic explosive and detonators. They had enough to blow a dam from what Jack understood, and he hoped it was enough.
Night fell and it was time. They painted their faces and arms matte black, put on their graphite robes and took off across the half-klick between the forest and the city. They made good use of cover, keeping hedge lines and storage containers between themselves and their goal. No sense being seen in the open if they could help it.
Then they came to the great blue city itself, which sat on a bed of roots that held it above the ground. There were gaps between the roots creating natural crawlspaces, and Jack wondered what lived down below. He wondered that in a purely academic sort of way, not in any mood to find out, or even get close. The last thing he wanted was to meet the alien version of a rattlesnake.