Coven's Rebellion Chapter 25

Alright, tentatively calling it for the rework of this story for now. It could probably use more chapters, but it’s causing a roadblock for motivation so I’m going to leave it there. Anyway, hope you all enjoy this chapter! Fluff Link.

Amelia

Our trip through Trenton was a lesson that we decided to learn from. Crazy concept, I know. As soon as we were out in the true farmland, we left the roads.

Back in the day, there was this romanticised image of the American farmer, with his dirt stained hands, good natured smile, and white skin. That last part was bafflingly important to them for some reason.

That image was now a myth, if it had ever existed at all. In its place, titanic metal monsters rolled their vast arms over artificially flat fields, spraying combination weed control and nutrient liquid.

They had sensors to detect people or animals getting into the crops, of course, but they weren't expecting cold blooded robot people. Lowering our temperatures allowed us to pass just fine, at least for now. We had no idea if a human was also viewing the feed. We were fast enough that it didn't matter.

Our target was north west, so that was the direction we travelled in, and even hurrying, we didn't make it to the mountains for a full day and a half. I was honestly scared that my robo-skin was the only thing stopping me from shedding bolts. We made a big deal about these android bodies, but living ones actually had them beat on long term use.

Your first thought is probably to argue with that. Metal is stronger than flesh, after all, but think about this. How often do you have to replace your phone, or your chair, or your cleaning bot? On the other end, most people will never replace their body, only an organ or two. That was the scariest thing about digital existence to be honest. Thankfully, there were some smart as fuck SAI doing a lot of research on the subject. Our job was to give them the time and safety to get that research done — hence, the mountains.

The Appalachian mountains were once fascinating to me. Like, it was crazy the way that it looked like someone had heated a normal mountain range, then stretched it out like molten sugar.

I was no longer riveted by them. Up, down, up, down — the fucking ridgelines never seemed to end. If I'd been made of flesh, we'd be two ridges back, taking an extended rest stop. Even with the crazy android bodies, the trip was rough. Plus, we couldn't touch the roads, since the culties liked to send armed patrols along them.

At least we were armed now, courtesy of a hunting cabin. It was actually marked out as a potential target before we began this whole thing.

After that cabin, I was convinced that every crazy rumour I'd heard about Americans was true. Too many guns to count had sat neatly on racks inside a basement bunker. Like, it was an excessive number of weapons. Half of them weren't even useful for hunting. I mean shit, the chunky anti-materiel rifle I carried couldn't leave much of an animal left.

“Okay, one more ridge, I think,” Rusti said with a disturbing lack of heavy breathing. None of us were huffing and puffing, actually — since, you know, no lungs.

“Let's review what we know of this place,” Rosa said, staring out into the dark with a stoic, pensive expression.

Nodding, Rusti squared their shoulders and began to stare into the middle distance. In our shared augmented reality overlay thingy, a satellite image of our target flickered into place. “It’s a sort of zen vacation village built into a thin valley. It’s got four landing pads big enough for cargo VTOL fliers and a large tunnel entrance built into a steel embankment. The main complex is, as far as we know, underground.”

Clearing my throat, I added, “Back when the UN agents broke in, the site had a contingent of special operators running primary defence, with a team of three light mechs ready to be deployed if they thought it was needed. Now, there’s nothing but a skeleton crew of researchers and a small team of regular army types. No mechs anymore, thank fuck.”

The files that we stole from the UN contained a lot of preliminary stuff, and even more obscuring black bars, but the main thing I’d been interested in were the reports written by the team that infiltrated the site. Honestly, I was impressed when I read how they used super specialised drones to go all mole-mode and dig into the facility from the adjacent valley.

How the fuck the crew in the site didn't notice, and if the tunnel still existed, we had zero clue. We did have a rough idea where the hole was, though. Heh. Maybe they just let a bunch of bush hide it.

My personal hunch was that the AR found the hole later on and that’s why they moved the site. Still, we had other plans if this one didn’t fly.

“Remember, the information we have about the facility as it currently stands is quite limited. There could be surprises outside of what satellite observations have been able to identify,” Rosa said as she began to move again.

I snorted drily. “Which means there's a hefty chance that this op will go unbelievably sideways.”

Rusti laughed softly. “Let's track this tunnel down.”

“Love a filthy hole found in a valley,” I muttered, as I lost the fight to hold the joke in. The little gremlins in my brain were so sneaky, the way they smuggled words around my filter.

Rosa side-eyed me. “Crass.”

I grinned. She smiled and rolled her eyes.

The forest around us was odd. It kinda felt like it was both dense, and open. Up along the border, the forest was all spruce trees with thick lower branches or random shrubs where sunlight could get below. Here, it was just open trunks up into the canopy, with a little lower vegetation every so often. Oh, and let's not forget the moss. It was everywhere that water could possibly collect. Nothing was safe from the tiny… wait, did moss have roots? I wasn't sure. Either way, there was a lot of it, and it made the forest feel damp.

In front of us on the slope of the mountain, was a heavy, moss covered boulder. Just behind and above it, there was a dark slit that devoured all light. It was the only indication that there was a tunnel behind the heavy lump of rock.

“I could fit through in nanite form,” Rosa commented.

Pursing my lips, I shoved at the boulder with a hand. It shifted just a tiny smidge. “Hey, it moved. If we work together, these android bodies could probably get it out of the way.”

Rusti laughed softly. “Or, we could leave the boulder where it is and widen the hole. It's only dirt.”

Rosa and I shared a wince. Right. That was probably the ticket.

Looking around, Rusti grabbed a stick from the forest floor, tested it with a flex, then snapped it into two sharp halves. One was passed to me. Even as a ghost haunting a computer, I couldn't escape shovel duty.

Thankfully, it didn't take us long to widen it enough so that Mr Perfect Specimen could fit through it. He was the biggest of the three of us, obviously.

Before we went through, we stopped to check our gear. Our little cutesy dresses were gone, now. In their place was… well, calling it fabric felt like burying the lede a bit. It was thick, and coupled with the sturdy construction of our badass bodies, would allow us to take some serious hits before we started undergoing high-velocity disassembly. As for our heads and the less flexible parts of our bodies, they were clad in hard, sleek polymer armour. From head to toe, the lightweight gear was a matte black, except when the smooth face shields were up so we could see each other.

On my back, I had the large anti-materiel rifle I'd pilfered from the cabin, along with a less unwieldy weapon that authorities would label as a ‘personal defence weapon’. In terms that anyone outside of the logi-barn could understand, it was a glorified SMG. Its very presence on my person was an affront to everything I stood for. However, there were some, few specific times when a big gun might be less ideal… might.

Rusti had a similar style of weapon on his back, but because we stole them from a gun-nut’s cabin rather than checking them out from an armoury, it wasn't identical. We made sure they both took the same type of ammo and mags, though.

Rosa, of course, had no weapons visible.

“I'm going first,” she said, and slid into the filthy, widened hole.

I laughed internally at my low-hanging joke, then followed her in. Rusti wiggled through behind me.

Inside the tunnel, I was surprised to see that a few feet in, it got taller and gained spray-on construction foam walls. Even Rusti could walk without ducking his head.

On silent feet, we began to inch our way down the dark tunnel. The walls made me uncomfortable in a way that was difficult to describe. Basically, the undulating, bulbous surface of the foam walls combined with low light made it seem like we were creeping down the throat of some massive, dead worm.

Maybe two hundred metres in, it widened into a space that I immediately dubbed, ‘the stomach’. The floor was at least smooth, which I was quite grateful for.

There wasn't much in the room, except for some cheaply printed furniture like tables, chairs, and beds. Nothing else was left, but this was clearly where the UN team had lived while they slowly excavated the tunnel.

It had to have taken a while, too, because a base like the one we were infiltrating had to have had a seismic sensor to detect exactly this brand of spec ops shenanigans.

Without a word, Rosa spun to record a 360 degree shot of the room, then continued. Rusti and I followed behind like loyal hounds.

The tunnel went on for fucking ages, and it was a nightmare on my nerves. Every single curve of the tunnel made my hackles stand on end. My instincts were humming with tension, waiting for our path to run into defenders.

None showed up, though, so I was left anticipating a party that never happened. Which, to be clear, was a good thing. Any party they had planned wouldn't be as fun as a birthday, it would almost certainly be the high-velocity kinetic intervention variety. Not my favourite, if I had to pick one.

Eventually, mercifully, we arrived at the end of the hardened flesh tunnel. It was a slab of concrete with a handle in it and two complicated, heavy duty hinges on one side. The whole wall appeared to slide in towards us, then swing open.

The facility would be beyond it, and hopefully, we'd find some answers about R.A.I.D.S. God, we needed a win on that front.