Chapter 160: MQ-9 Reaper Part 1

Inside the air-conditioned shelter parked behind the palace hangars at Port Solis, the world was reduced to four high-definition flatscreen monitors, glowing keyboard backlights, and the steady, low hum of server racks.

Captain Mark “Viper” Miller sat in the left pilot seat, his hand resting lightly on the molded flight stick. To his right, seated in the sensor operator chair, sat Master Sergeant Ray “Gimbal” Kowalski. Kowalski had his left hand resting on the throttle lever and his right hand wrapped around the tracking rollerball.

Through their headsets, only the low hiss of the satellite data link and the muffled rumble of nearby generators broke the quiet.

“Uplink latency is steady at one-point-two seconds,” Kowalski said, his eyes scanning across the diagnostic telemetry running down the edge of his left monitor. “Ku-band satcom link is solid. Bird is flying clean, Mark.”

“Copy,” Miller replied, adjusting his headset slightly. “Setting autopilot hold at Angels twenty-two. Airspeed one-four-zero knots indicated. Wind over the ridge is twenty knots out of the northeast. Give me the primary sensor sweep.”

“Coming online now. Switching MTS-B pod to electro-optical narrow.”

On the primary center monitor, the live feed from the MQ-9 Reaper drone snapped into crystal-clear clarity.

Twenty-two thousand feet below the drone’s composite wings, the western coastline and the conquered capital had vanished, swallowed by the jagged, snow-dusted peaks of the Dragonspine Mountains. The aircraft had been orbiting silently in the thin, freezing mountain air for three hours, its muffled pusher-propeller making less noise from the ground than a distant bee.

Under the aircraft’s chin, the multi-spectral targeting turret rotated smoothly on its gimbal, slicing through the thin haze with high-magnification glass.

“Check the waypoint grid,” Miller said, glancing down at his navigation display. “Command wants eyes on sector Bravo-Two first. That’s the choke point—Devil’s Throat.”

“Panning south-southeast,” Kowalski replied, rolling the ball beneath his palm.

The screen shifted across miles of steep, red-clay gorges and crumbling shale ravines.

“Zooming in on the main pass,” Kowalski murmured. “Looking at the old imperial road… I’ve got negative activity on the gravel trail. No wagon ruts, no pack mules, no footprint disturbances. Wait, let me punch in the infrared.”

He tapped a key, and the picture inverted into black-hot thermal imaging. The cold stone cliffs turned a pale gray, while patches of snow gleamed white.

“Nothing hot down there,” Kowalski said, shaking his head. “No campfires, no cook stoves, no heat signatures under the rock overhangs. The gorge is totally cold. If anyone’s home at Devil’s Throat, they’re buried under solid granite.”

“Copy that. Checkpoint Alpha is negative,” Miller reported, marking the waypoint on his flight log. “Let’s bring her around to sector Bravo-Three. The high ground. Rin called it Frostfang Ridge.”

Miller nudged the flight stick gently to the right.

Miles away in the sky above the peaks, the long, slender wings of the Reaper tilted, banking into a wide, lazy turn. The GPS coordinates refreshed automatically on the pilot’s head-up display, guiding the aircraft northeast toward the jagged, white plateaus.

“Approaching Frostfang,” Kowalski said, leaning closer to his glass. “Lots of cloud clutter at twelve thousand. I’m slewing the turret through the gaps. There’s the fortress. Ancient stone bastions, square watchtowers. Let’s see if the lights are on.”

The camera zoomed in on the ruined fortress perched on the edge of a snow-covered cliff.

“Looks like a ghost town,” Kowalski observed, adjusting the focus ring. “The timber roofs on the barracks collapsed decades ago. Courtyards are covered in three feet of untouched powder. Thermal is showing zero heat blooming around the foundation. Nobody is living up there unless they don’t breathe.”

“Keep a scan on the access trails just in case,” Miller said.

“Scanning… negative. The switchbacks are completely blocked by recent avalanches. You couldn’t get a goat up that trail, let alone an army. Frostfang is a bust.”

Miller let out a slow breath, tapping his fingers against the throttle console. “That leaves sector Bravo-Four. The Ironwood Basin.”

“Heading south, toward the river valley,” Kowalski said, slewing the sensor ball back down toward the lower terrain. “Command said the vegetation down there has weird natural properties. Dense ironwood canopy, dense trunk clustering. If they’re trying to hide from overhead imagery, that’s where I’d dig in.”

The Reaper straightened out its heading, cruising smoothly over the ridge line.

Below, the jagged white cliffs dropped sharply into a massive, sunken valley.

The contrast was striking. Where the surrounding mountains were red clay and white snow, the Ironwood Basin was pitch-black. A dense, ancient forest stretched for nearly twenty miles across the valley floor, hugged tightly between two sheer rock walls. The trees were massive, with thick, gnarly trunks and dark, metallic-looking leaves that didn’t sway with the high winds. A wide, sluggish river cut through the center of the trees, its water dark and slow-moving.

“That’s a lot of shadow,” Miller noted, watching the live feed. “Drop the pod into mid-wave infrared. Let’s see if we can burn through the canopy.”

“Roger. Flipping to MWIR.”

The screen flickered. The thick green-black hue of the canopy shifted to dark slate gray.

Kowalski began running slow, grid-like sweep lines across the riverbank, methodically checking clearing after clearing. For ten minutes, the screen showed nothing but the steady, monotonous gray of dense forest cover.

“Wind shear is picking up over the valley,” Miller said, watching his airspeed indicator dance slightly. “Compensating with left rudder. We’ve got about forty minutes of station time before bingo fuel.”

“Hold on,” Kowalski interrupted, his voice dropping an octave. His fingers stopped on the rollerball. “Look at the western river bend. Right by the sandbar.”

Miller shifted his eyes to the sensor screen.

At first glance, it looked like a cluster of fallen boulders along the shoreline. But as Kowalski tightened the focal zoom, the shapes resolved into something unnatural.

“I’ve got structure,” Kowalski said, his tone turning crisp. “Temporary pole-and-canvas tents. Three… four… at least eight large shelters tucked tight under the overhanging branches. They’ve got fresh pine boughs thrown over the tops for camouflage.”

“Any sentries?” Miller asked.

“Scanning the perimeter,” Kowalski muttered, clicking between color optical and thermal. “Got thermal blooming right by the water line. That’s a hearth fire. Suppressed under a baffled rock chimney, but the exhaust is leaking out into the brush.”

He zoomed the camera in as far as the high-altitude optics could push.

A gap opened in the thick ironwood canopy. Two figures walked out from beneath the dark branches, heading toward the riverbank.

“Visual on personnel,” Kowalski announced, his hand locking the tracking crosshairs dead center on the two moving shapes. “Mark, I’ve got warm bodies in the clearing.”