"And suddenly I realized that I should have to shoot the elephant after all."
— George Orwell, Shooting an Elephant, 1936
The Amazon from altitude had been an endless green carpet. Green and flat and not quite real, the way things look when you're still high enough to pretend they're abstract. From ten feet above the roots, it was an uneven, wet, dense maze.
The Specter threaded south of Leticia between trunks, the maglev drive pushing them silently forward, hull passive camo doing its thing with the bark and shadow on either side. Zoe had her sniper rifle across her lap, scope up, watching the tree line. The trees were enormous down here. They were larger and more alive than anything he'd seen before. Sothing shrieked in the upper canopy, loud enough to register through the visor's audio filters, and then went quiet.
The suit was sealed tight. The environntal sidebar read 38 degrees Celsius on his visor, ninety-four percent humidity. His Phantom armor managed all of it just fine, which was good because Luca had no interest in knowing what that actually felt like.
"Ghost One, you're about three hundred out," Ryan said through the comm. The callsign had been Erik's idea. Ryan had been calling himself Control ever since, and he clearly thought it suited him. "Poorwill drone feeds are live. Southeast is clean. North approach, I've got a heat signature that doesn't match the surroundings. Hold for a mont."
"Holding," Luca said.
On the display, the drone feeds resolved. Six dinner-plate discs working an expanding pattern ahead of the Specter, their thermal overlays cutting through the canopy in shades of orange and yellow. Most of it was wildlife. Sothing very large was moving northeast, and he was glad it wasn't moving toward them.
"North is clear," Ryan said. "Big family of capybaras. You're good-- Proceed, Ghost One."
"Copy."
"Danny's running a topographical analysis piggybacking on the ridian's sensors. Your ridge is about two hundred out. He'll walk you in."
Luca eased the Specter into a slower speed, letting the camo settle as a root formation ca up on the left. A snake the width of his arm was draped across it, completely unbothered. He steered around.
Ryan called the first anomaly twelve minutes later.
"Ghost One." Ryan's voice dropped a register. "North of you, there's a tree hollow cluster, heat signature that doesn't fit. Not moving. Like, at all."
Luca brought the Specter to near-stop, the camo settling as he raised his sniper scope and scanned where Ryan had flagged.
Forty-three ters out, according to the scope, three ters up, in the crook of a large tree. Clear as day on thermal. Human-shaped, ard, completely still. The foliage around him was rearranged and set up for an ambush. Against TL8 gear he'd be a ghost. Standard thermals wouldn't punch through the canopy cover, and anyone running night vision would see nothing but bark and leaves.
There was a second one, twelve ters left of the first in a similar enough posture. Real work had gone into these positions.
He thought about the UER teams that hadn't co back. Regular spec ops. Good soldiers, probably. They'd have walked right into it.
The second figure's gear resolved on his HUD. TL8 energy rifle, powered optics, a second energy cell on the harness. He was looking at them from thirty-eight ters away, motionless, invisible, and they had no idea.
"I see them," he said.
"Both?" Ryan asked.
"Both."
"There's a third," Danny said. He'd been quiet for the last ten minutes and the sound of his voice made Zoe look over. "In the stream. Running parallel to your approach, standing still in the water. I almost missed him."
Luca moved the scope. A group of monkeys moved through the canopy above the stream, rattling branches, and every insect in range responded at once. The stream temperature was masking most of the thermal read, but the Phantom separated it out. The third figure was standing mid-thigh in the current, facing their direction, perfectly still.
He activated [Predictive Modeling] on the first figure. Five seconds, and the ability pushed back a read: level 58. High-end TL8 energy rifle, the kind sourced from Ganyde's portals. It had powered optics and a harness with an integrated energy cell.
He ran the second. Level 60. The third, standing in the water, ca back at 59.
"Do not engage, Ghost One." Erik's voice through the comm, calm and even. "Keep the elent of surprise. Continue toward the objective."
Luca went still. Erik had been on the line the whole ti.
"Wasn't going to suggest it," Zoe said.
"Acknowledged, Ghost Two."
She nodded once, eyes still on the overlay.
Ryan ran the Poorwill drones in a wide arc and the picture ca back fast: an outer ring, deliberate and layered. Danny built it out from the hotel, running the count out loud. Eleven positions on the outside periter, maybe four more. They weren't evenly spaced. Soone had staggered them so there were no clean gaps.
Luca brought the Specter forward another hundred ters, gliding south between trunks at low hover until the full ring resolved on his overlay.
Luca activated [Ghost Protocol].
The Specter shimred and disappeared. Their suits synced in the sa instant, both of them gone, the whole vehicle a distortion in the air between the trees.
"Twelve minutes," he said.
"Moving," Zoe confird.
He eased them forward into the outer ring at a slow, steady hover. No gaps needed. No timing required. He just drove, and as each sentry position ca up on his overlay he tagged it, logged the level, flagged the gear. One by one. Ryan called position updates from the drone feeds and Luca threaded between them without stopping.
The sentries stood at their posts and stared at nothing.
It took four minutes to get through the outer ring. He had eight minutes of Ghost Protocol left when they cleared the other side.
Karen hadn't told him much about the Frente. She'd given him coordinates, a target count, and the nas of the missing UER personnel. The UER colonel he'd t with in Leticia hadn't been much more useful. He'd spewed a lot of phrases like "destabilizing elent" and "regional threat," which told him exactly nothing about who these people actually were or what they wanted. He hadn't pushed for more. He wasn't sure either of them would have given it straight.
What he could see told him enough. These weren't desperate people scraping by. The gear was expensive, the positions were professional, and soone had been leveling them through portals for years. That was a long-term investnt. You didn't do that for a raiding party.
He'd wanted Emily on this one. She would have been pulling up everything she could find on the Frente's history by now, feeding it to him in pieces while he drove, and he would have had actual context instead of the particular flavor of not-knowing that he currently had. But Emily was back in Sandworth working on the Triumph, because the equipnt tiline was coming up, and she was the only one he trusted to keep it on track.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
That was the job. He knew that.
He still would have preferred her here.
He tagged the last sentry position and kept moving. Whoever these people were, whatever they wanted, the UER personnel in the camp were the part that was his business. The rest of it was Karen's problem.
The clearing was small and half-overgrown, an old river channel that had silted off. Luca brought the Specter down into it, kept the active camo running while he powered the drive down to standby, and looked at Zoe.
"Control, we're going in on foot."
"Copy," Ryan replied. "I've got two Poorwills on you the whole way. I'm bringing the rest ."
"Good."
"Ghost One."
"Yeah."
"Ghost One, the outer ring was sentries. What's inside that periter is the actual camp. We're seeing a lot of movent, a lot of heat signatures, and the guard density around the central area is significantly higher." Ryan paused a beat. "I just want you to know what you're walking into."
"Eighteen positions in roughly two hundred ters," Danny said. "Give or take. I'm still building it."
"Yeah."
Danny's voice ca through a mont later. "Camp's bigger than the brief said. Drone thermals are giving ... I'm still counting, but it's past a hundred. Maybe well past."
Luca climbed out of the Specter. Through the visor the air above the roots shimred, heat bending the light even in shade. The suit read 39 now.
They moved the cut vegetation over the hull. It wasn't perfect, but good enough for the passive camo to handle the rest at distance.
"Control, we're going silent," Luca said. "Penetrating their periter on foot. Keep the Poorwills close but passive. Don't ping anything unless it moves on us."
"Copy," Ryan said.
Luca looked at Zoe. She already had her rifle up, muzzle low, watching the tree line. She raised an eyebrow.
He nodded and they went in.
The camp ca together in pieces, one thing resolving before the next announced itself. None of it matching the briefing.
The diffuse glow of powered equipnt bleeding through the canopy in the wrong color for anything that belonged here. Then sound ca through the visor's audio pickup: voices, sothing with a chanical cycle running sowhere in the middle distance. Then the camp itself resolved through the trees, tent by tent, all of it larger and more organized than the briefing had described.
They ca up to the inner ring and Luca burned [Proximity Threat Map] as soon as the first guards resolved on his HUD. Forty ters of overlay: guard positions, their sight lines, the pattern of their movent rendered in soft amber against the jungle dark. Eighteen guards in roughly two hundred ters, just like Danny had said, but the map showed him what the drone feed couldn't: each guard was positioned to see exactly what the one next to them couldn't.
He and Zoe stood still for a full minute, letting the map populate. Then they went.
It took thirty minutes to get through without touching anyone.
"There are trip lines," Zoe said over private comms, her voice low. "Canopy level, about four ters up. Running between the trunks parallel to the periter. We went under them."
Luca looked back the way they'd co. Nothing visible from his angle.
"Mono-wire," she said. "You'd never see it without elevation."
He filed that and kept moving.
The camp was not what the UER briefing had suggested. The briefing had described a guerrilla base, maybe forty people, rudintary shelters. What Luca was looking at through his scope from up in the branches of a strangler fig was organized.
He ran [Predictive Modeling] across the nearest cluster of fighters. Most of the camp was in the twenties and low thirties. Portal-leveled, but capped out at the Earth ceiling. Seventy-eight of them clustered in that range. Then a smaller group, nineteen fighters stationed around the central tents, up in elevated watch posts lashed into the canopy. Those ca back in the high forties to mid-fifties. The highest reading was a woman shouting orders near the central tent. Level 60.
The weapons were TL8 energy rifles across the board, three or four variants, nothing matching. Everyone was carrying sidearms at the sa tier. Two at the central path were wearing power armor. The gear was portal loot, but a mismatched ss, different makes, different configs. He recognized the level 60 woman's rifle. That was a portal drop from Ganyde. You didn't walk into a store and find one of those.
Soone had been running these people through off-planet portals.
"Ghost Two, what's your position?" he said over private comms.
"East side, eighteen ters up. Big one with the pale bark and the wide leaves." A pause. "The watch posts have relay units strung between them. Small, wired in."
"All of them?"
"Every elevated position I can see. Soone's running live feeds from up here to sowhere. These aren't just lookouts."
He flagged it for Danny and kept looking.
Then he found the portal.
He didn't need his instrunts. The shimr was visible from his position in the canopy, a vertical distortion, faint glow, portal dormant but still drawing. The vegetation around the far wall was denser than it should have been. Years of persistent light. Soone had been running this thing a long ti.
He worked his way around the edge of the camp until he had a better angle, got close enough to raise his hand toward it, and his interface activated.
[System ssage: Operation Site]
Gateway: Stable
Recomnded Level: 28
Maximum Level: 32
Environntal Hazards: Dense canopy, high-level fauna
He tagged the portal for Danny and backed away.
Then he found the jaguars.
They were chained near the central tent, two of them, each on a heavy anchor chain, the links run through an iron ring bolted to a buried post. These weren't the chains you'd put on an animal. They were the chains you'd use to secure a boat, and whoever had put them there had not been optimistic about the outco.
Pulling his multitool, he aid it at the nearer cat and let the scan run.
[Lifeform Scan Complete]
Species: Panthera onca
Classification: Mammal
Age: Adult
Level: 32
Risk-Category: Lethal
Notes: Extended portal exposure has produced significant physiological deviation from baseline. Muscle density 340% above natural maximum. Stress markers consistent with prolonged restraint.
Level thirty-two jaguars. A level thirty-two jaguar was not a jaguar. It was a jaguar that had fought portal monsters long enough to beco sothing that used the word jaguar as a starting point and went from there.
Both of them were lying down the way animals do when they've stopped fighting the chain.
"Luca." Zoe's voice, private comms.
"I see them."
"They're beautiful," she added.
"They're level thirty-two."
"I want to cut them loose," said Zoe, and Luca could almost picture her creeping closer to them.
"After we find our target."
"That's not a no."
He tagged them and kept moving. He would have to run his multitool against those Sonoran mustangs whenever he made it ho, see what the system had done to them.
He almost missed the north side of the camp entirely. It was set back from everything else, screened by a row of supply tarps strung between the trees. He worked around to it slowly, and when he got a clear angle he stopped.
Three people tied to posts. They had stripped UER uniforms and were bruised and bleeding. Their hands bound behind them to wooden posts driven into the ground. One of them wasn't moving, head down, unconscious or past that, he couldn't tell from here. The other two were alive. One had his face turned up toward the canopy, eyes open, just staring at nothing.
Karen had said three extraction attempts, and none ca back out.
"Zoe." His voice ca out flat.
"One of them is breathing shallow," Zoe replied. "But breathing."
He tagged the location, labeled it, and kept going.
The prisoner tent was on the eastern side of the camp, set back from the center. Two guards at the entrance, both in their mid-fifties, were holding energy rifles loosely at their sides.
Getting close enough to scan the inside ant crossing twenty ters of open ground between two tent lines. The armor's Silent-Stride handled most of it. Halfway across, one of the guards turned and leaned against a support post to light sothing.
Luca triggered [Silent Step] and made himself keep walking. Every part of him said stop. He kept walking. The guard lit his cigarette, exhaled, looked at nothing, and turned back. Luca reached the shadow of the tent's back panel and pressed flat against it.
He worked the thermal overlay and counted the heat signatures inside. Then counted again.
The briefing said six hostages.
Thermal showed twenty-three separate signatures clustered inside the tent. It was possible so of those were guards inside. It was also possible the Bogotá team of six was not the only team that had gone missing in the Colombian Amazon in the last two years.
He counted again. Still twenty-three.
Danny needed this data. Luca queued the thermal snapshot and tagged it for Danny to pull.
A side entrance opened. Two fighters ca out dragging a woman between them. Mid-twenties. Jeans torn at the knee. A t-shirt shredded at the collar, bruised skin underneath. Blindfolded. Gagged. Her hands zip-tied behind her back and both fighters had holds on her, one on each arm, because she was fighting them blind. Her feet found the ground every few steps and she threw her weight against them, twisting, pulling, and one of the fighters hit her across the back of the head with an open hand to get her moving again.
Luca's scope crosshair moved without him deciding it would.
He pulled it back.
They dragged her across the clearing toward what he'd assud was the commander's tent. The guard at the entrance held the flap. She got one foot planted against the post and shoved, and it took both fighters and the third guard to get her inside. His HUD showed two more signatures inside the tent.
The flap dropped.
"That is not happening," Luca heard himself say.
A tile had appeared in the upper right corner of his interface. He didn't rember it appearing. It was just there now, blinking once, labeled [HOSTILE DESIGNATION AUTHORITY].
He stared at it for a second.
Then he pulled it open.
He looked at the tent flap and focused on what was behind it and what he'd just watched happen, and the text field filled itself.
Frente de Liberación de la Cuenca.
The System had read him faster than he'd read himself.
He confird.
[House Stevens: Hostile Designation Active]
Designation: Frente de Liberación de la Cuenca
Filed by: Master of Venture Luca Rossi
Every fighter in his field of view was tagged red simultaneously. A hundred and counting, scattered across the camp, in the watch posts, at the periter. The jungle full of red.
Karen probably got the notification. He didn't think about that. She'd been the one who asked him to co out here. She could decide what it ant.
The interface closed. Across the clearing, the flap to the smaller tent stayed closed.
"Ghost One." Erik's voice, quiet through the comm. "Keep your eyes on the mission."
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