Chapter 298: Four Days Later

"Found something interesting, Overseer?"

Kordula closed the record before she turned around.

Hans stood at the end of the row with his hands in his pockets, Dianne a step behind him. Neither of them looked like they had wandered down here by accident.

"Your Directorate kept files on the people it was supposed to protect," she said.

"It was never my Directorate." Hans glanced at the panel she had just closed. "But yes, I’ve read that one too. Johannes will want to read it once he wakes up."

"What about the rest?"

"The rest is the reason you and Marcus are here."

Hans walked along the racks, reading the labels as he passed. "The drives you mentioned, the damaged ones at the plant, left this morning. They’ll be in Intake by tonight."

"So you want to crack DAEDALUS technology and use it for yourself?"

"Are you against it?"

"No." Kordula looked back at the terminal. "At least this way it’s actually being used."

He tilted his head toward the exit. "Your Tech Center won’t be finished for another few days. I’d rather you didn’t spend all of them in here."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning pack for the cold, Overseer. You’re going to Pylow tomorrow."

...

The walk back to the Command Center took about ten minutes, and Hans spent most of it going through reports from the rest of his troops.

Four days had passed since the Silverpeak incident, and his army hadn’t spent any of them waiting for him.

The Radar refits were still rolling out one facility at a time. Every completed refit expanded another part of the map and changed what Hans could see inside it.

The old Radar gave him markers and rough terrain.

The upgraded network gave him individual contacts instead of broad clusters, better building geometry, heat, movement and a much clearer picture underground. As long as a chamber, shaft, tunnel or passage connected into the rest of an underground network, the Radar could keep following it through the ground.

Completely isolated spaces were another matter.

Hans opened the research panel while he walked.

------

[ Research Status — Tech Center #1 ]

[ Barracks Personnel Induction Wing ]

Active

[ ETA ]

1 day, 2 hours, 0 minutes

------

Tyrus still had another day to go.

Hans closed the panel as the Command Center doors opened.

Dianne already had the larger map waiting for him, starting at the south.

The five-way intercity junction was still the easiest point to orient around.

Horjus sat to its east. Silverpeak lay farther south. Skinshank City was west of Silverpeak on the Hawford-facing side, while Stonefall sat northwest of the junction.

Dianne enlarged Silverpeak first.

Southern Command hadn’t stopped moving after the battle.

Brandon’s forces held the outer districts and every major road leading out of the city, while forward elements were already pushing toward the core.

According to Brandon, practically every surviving faction inside Silverpeak was grateful for it.

The Industrial Continuity Directorate was the most enthusiastic. Its leader had practically offered to hand her entire workforce over to the Golden Eagle Army.

Hans couldn’t tell whether the apocalypse had driven her a little mad or whether she was simply practical. Either way, she looked like a very good candidate for Personnel Integration.

Silverpeak itself had gone quiet, if not exactly peaceful. Civilians were coming out of districts sealed during the fighting, while the ICD and MEA’s local coordinators had asked for meetings almost every day.

Several ore deposits had also appeared among the latest reports.

Hans opened the nearest one. Red markers moved around the site.

They were larger than anything he had seen so far, slow enough that he could follow them individually, and unlike ordinary infected, they didn’t seem to wander without purpose.

Hans frowned.

He wanted those deposits badly.

The Ore Refineries had been waiting for something worth feeding into them. The things standing around the deposits were the problem.

He watched one of the larger markers move along almost the exact same path it had used several minutes earlier.

"Are these things infected?"

"Unconfirmed," Dianne answered.

They didn’t look normal to him either.

"Have Brandon scout the ore sites first. Use the Veterans."

"Understood."

Dianne moved to the next report.

The prisoners from the Hawford military installation had started talking as well.

They called themselves the New Ashington Army.

Somewhere above their local chain was a general who had served Ashington before the Event, but none of the prisoners had been able to give Golden Eagle a useful identity.

Most only knew their immediate orders.

A few appeared to know more, and Dianne had marked those transcripts separately.

Hans opened one.

The answers became much less useful the farther the questions moved above the soldier’s immediate command.

"That’s strange. Why can’t they recall who their immediate superior is?"

Hawford itself had said nothing. That silence bothered Hans more than another angry transmission would have.

A military faction had lost a strike force and then gone completely quiet. They were either very disciplined, very busy, or very confident.

He pulled the map slightly north.

Horjus was quieter.

Simon Bond’s Battalion still held the city. Most of the eastern districts that had been red during the previous reports were gray or blue now, and traffic through the five-way junction was nearly double what it used to be.

Then Hans finally opened Stonefall. The upgraded Radar had brought almost the entire city into view.

At least fifty million infected filled the city, packed through district after district until only a few scattered gray markers remained around the edges.

Skinshank looked better only because the number was smaller. Somewhere between twenty and thirty million infected occupied the city west of Silverpeak.

Hans leaned back and looked at the whole southern picture again.

Stonefall and Skinshank could wait. He could clear them, but that would only stretch his army across more approaches than it needed to cover right now.

Fifty million infected was not the problem.

Skinshank bordered Hawford’s side of the southern system. If Golden Eagle started moving into the city while Hawford’s TETHER-based military pushed in from the other direction, Hans could end up repeating Silverpeak on a much larger scale.

He didn’t need that to happen this early.

"Tell Brandon to keep pushing into Silverpeak’s core," Hans said. "Stonefall and Skinshank wait. Bond will occupy Horjus and stabilize it first."

"Understood."

Dianne marked both orders.