The Exfiltration
An earlier version of the beginning of the Rayna/Zeke story that I’ve published several chapters from. This is from last year, when the idea started as a short story. I thought you might find the evolution of the ideas interesting. As always, shoot me an e-mail here if you have a comment.
Rayna pulled her breather mask up, hoping that the smell was just in her mask. It wasn’t. She wasn’t going to get a clean breath as she picked her way through the smoldering rubble of New Oakland's devastated cityscape.
Every step sent plumes of ash and pulverized concrete billowing around her armored combat boots. The occasional distant rumble of artillery strikes - a stark reminder that the fight for survival raged on beyond this tomb of a city - punctuated the eerie quiet.
Captain Rayna Khail's shoulders tensed as a wave of memories crashed over her. Three years earlier, she had stood in this very district, screaming orders into her comm unit as the sky opened up in a hellish downpour of plasma fire. The Syndicate's AI-controlled war machines had torn through their defenses like a scythe through wheat. Entire city blocks were reduced to flaming wreckage in a matter of hours.
Three years.
She had lost so many good soldiers that day, brave men and women who gave everything to try and stop the onslaught. Fist clenched, Rayna’s jaw tightened with resolve. She didn't want their sacrifices to be without purpose.
The death of Ruby had been the hardest of all. Ruby and Rayna had been together for years, since well before the uprising. To see Ruby die in front of her on the battlefield, to see the plasma strike cut her in half, was more than she’d thought she could bear. And to see the woman firing the weapon laugh out loud was soul crushing.
Rayna raged as the tall woman with a laser scar shaped like a misshapen flower on her left cheek turned and ran. The woman went by the nom de guerre Colonel Espectro (the Wraith in Spanish) and her reputation for ruthlessly using the Syndicate’s AI assets was terrifying. Almost nothing else was known about Espectro.
A soft whine beside her brought Rayna back to the present. Rayna glanced down at Zeke. The cybernetically enhanced canine looked up with those soulful brown eyes, as if sensing the anguish roiling within her. She managed a weary smile and scratched behind his ears - one of the few remaining comforts in this scorched world.
"Been a long time, hasn't it, boy? We’ve seen some shit.” Zeke had been her loyal companion since she'd found him as a pup, the sole survivor of a destroyed Resistance outpost. Together, they had endured the darkest days of the Syndicate occupation.
The cutting-edge Resistance hospital in Monterey treated Zeke after he was badly wounded in one ferocious battle. The animal that came back to her was still Zeke in every way, but he was a grafted unit the equivalent of the latest mech warriors.
Her tactical HUD flickered with new telemetry from the drone over watch that the Resistance had running silently overhead. Rayna studied the projected path, feeling a pang of guilt. If they failed this mission to extract the rogue scientist Dr. Amara Vance, any hope of countering the enemy's technological advantage would be lost.
The intel on Dr. Vance had been incomplete: one of the Syndicate’s leading AI scientists had decided to defect, if they could get her safely out of the territory held by the Syndicate. If. No images of Dr. Vance had been identified, so the exfiltration was based on the limited knowledge of a general location and a pass phrase selected by Dr. Vance.
As Rayna and Zeke pressed on through the rubble-strewn streets, her boot struck something soft and solid. She recoiled, her rifle snapping up - only to find the bloodied face of a Resistance fighter staring blankly up at her. The tattered uniform told her all she needed to know about his allegiance.
"Easy, soldier," she said softly, kneeling to check his vitals. A faint pulse still trembled in the man's neck. "Can you hear me? What's your unit?"
The fighter's eyes fluttered open, his face contorting in a grimace of pain. "Tau...Tau-Twelve," he rasped. "We were...ambushed by hunter drones..."
Rayna quickly applied a trauma patch, desperately trying to staunch the flow of blood from the gaping wound in his abdomen. "Just hold on. Can you tell me what you were doing in this sector?"
The man coughed, spitting out a thick gout of crimson. "Recon...for Vance. She's here...in the city..."
Rayna felt her breath catch in her throat. Maybe they were just steps away from their prize. She gripped the fighter's hand, her voice taking on a soothing tone.
"It's okay, you did good. Just tell me where, and we'll bring Vance home."
As the life slowly drained from the man's eyes, Rayna said a silent prayer for his soul. Then she rose, her grip tightening around her rifle as she signaled Zeke forward once more.
The hunter drones would be swarming this area soon. But she was closer than ever to their salvation - and nothing would stop her from reaching Amara Vance.
Zeke's ears perked up suddenly, swiveling towards a distant metallic whirring noise. Rayna froze, straining to pinpoint the source of the sound over the crackle of flames. Her grip tightened around her plasma rifle as the first hints of movement flickered in her tactical HUD's threat indicators.
"We've got company," she muttered, waving Zeke into a defensive position behind an overturned ground truck.
The first Syndicate hunter drone sliced into view, its crimson optic sensors sweeping the rubble-strewn intersection with surgical precision. Rayna held her breath as two more drones joined the first, fanning out in a wide search pattern. The AI running them sensed that their targets were close by and the drones dropped to an altitude of only a few meters.
Her HUD pinged an urgent alert - multiple heat signatures closing in on her position from the north and east corridors. They were boxed in.
"Okay, boy, just like we trained," Rayna whispered, scratching Zeke's head reassuringly. "I'll draw their fire, you hit them from the flank. We have to punch a hole through their line."
Zeke issued a low growl of acknowledgment, his cybernetic optics glowing faintly as his combat protocols activated. While his outward appearance was that of a typical military canine, Zeke's true capabilities were on par with the most advanced Syndicate war machines.
The first drone swept overhead, its repulsor jets kicking up a swirling vortex of ash and debris. Rayna waited for the perfect window, then launched herself into the open with her rifle blazing. Superheated plasma bolts lanced out, shearing through the hunter drone's stabilizers in a shower of sparks and shrapnel.
As the crippled machine spiraled towards the ground, Zeke burst from their cover in a blur of motion. His jaws unhinged with a sickening mechanical whir, and he clamped down on the second drone with unbelievable force. Hydraulic fluid sprayed in all directions as Zeke's titanium-laced teeth chewed through the Syndicate machine's armored plating like a can opener.
Rayna was already on the move, acquiring her next target and raking it with a blistering hail of plasma fire. She could feel the adrenaline surging through her veins, her instincts as a born warrior overriding all sense of fear or self-preservation.
One by one, the hunter drones fell to the onslaught of the woman and her canine partner. But the telltale thrum of larger repulsor engines signaled a far deadlier threat was inbound.
"Time to get the hell out of here, Zeke!" Rayna yelled over the cacophony of weapons fire and screeching metal.
As they sprinted towards the next intersection, Rayna's HUD projected a new route - one that would lead them straight to the heart of the Syndicate's occupation zone. And hopefully, to the one person who could help turn the tide against the AI onslaught.
The thunderous boom of heavy artillery shook the ground, raining rubble down onto the shattered avenue. Rayna ducked behind an abandoned ground transport, motioning for Zeke to stay close. Her tactical HUD was a blur of incoming data - Syndicate reinforcements were converging on her position in force.
"We're running out of time," she muttered, checking her dwindling ammunition supplies. At this rate, they'd be overwhelmed before ever reaching the objective.
Zeke whined softly, his ears flattening against the deafening barrage. Rayna gave him a reassuring pat, her expression one of grim determination. "Don't worry, boy. We've been through worse before.” She wasn’t sure if that was true.
Her HUD pinged an urgent alert - the route to Vance's last known coordinates was narrowing by the second. Rayna weighed her options, then made a split-second decision.
"Hang on!"
She scooped up Zeke and sprinted towards the adjacent alleyway, plasma bolts kicking up smoke and debris all around them. A derelict ground car provided just enough cover for Rayna to set Zeke down and trigger her tactical cloak.
For a few precious seconds, they were invisible to the Syndicate's sensor arrays. Rayna activated her grav-chute and launched them both upwards, sailing over the crumbling rooftops in a high-arcing trajectory. She could feel g-forces of the sudden acceleration like a punch in the solar plexus and she groaned involuntarily.
She gritted her teeth as they sailed across the devastated cityscape, willing her cloaking shield to hold. The grav-chute was a one-time use weapon, and Rayna hoped she’d chosen wisely.
They slammed down hard in a bone-jarring landing, Rayna's knees threatening to buckle from the impact. But her heads-up display was flashing new coordinates - they had bypassed the Syndicate blockade and were now mere blocks away from Vance's supposed location.
"This is it," Rayna said, catching her breath as she reloaded her rifle. "Stay sharp."
What was left of the city's research district loomed ahead, the once-grand spires of laboratories and universities reduced to shattered husks. Rayna swept her rifle across the decimated compound, searching for any sign of movement.
That's when she spotted it - a flicker of light in the basement level of the central building. A faint, artificial glow that could only be generated by...
"Advanced power core online," a modulated voice echoed from the shadows. "Identify yourself, intruder."
Rayna stepped forward slowly, hands raised in a non-threatening gesture as a tall lithe figure emerged from the rubble. Even beneath the grime and tattered fatigues, she could see that most of the woman’s face was covered by a Zeiss optical AR device.
"Dr. Amara Vance?" Rayna called out. "I'm Captain Rayna Khail, Resistance Battalion 127. We've come to extract you from the occupied zone."
The scientist regarded her warily for a moment, then gave a curt nod. "Khail...I've heard that name before. You'll have to forgive my security protocols - I can't afford to take any chances. What is the pass phrase?”
“By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken,” Rayna said as if by rote. “And what’s the response?”
”For dust you are and to dust you will return,” Vance said flatly.
“OK Dr. Vance, enough bible talk. We need to move, and quickly. The Syndicate's already zeroing in on our position."
Vance's eyes narrowed. "Then you'd better get me out of here before their hunter killers arrive. I have intel that could cripple the Syndicate's entire operational network."
As the two women hurried deeper into the shattered compound, Zeke fell into step beside Rayna, his cybernetic body tensed for combat. But Rayna knew Zeke sensed something else as well.
Now what? They had fought through hell itself to reach this point.
But if Vance's intelligence proved to be their key to victory, then every drop of blood and sacrifice would be worth it to free the world from the Syndicate's cold, unrelenting grasp.
Vance flipped up her AR device, her entire face now visible. And Rayna saw a laser scar that looked like a misshapen flower on the Vance’s left cheek.