AUTHOR'S NOTE: A short story with a secondary character from my upcoming novel, Red Tigress, positioned front and centre as she gets up to shenanigans in a 22nd-century war-blasted hellscape. Have at it, you horny lot.
Scouting missions on the Adrar Line were always a bore, but this was by far the worst.
Sergeant Helen White's scope scanned the maze of trenches dug into the dust three hundred and two metres ahead of her for the third time. At first sight, it was as though the enemy was doing well to keep their heads down. All for good reason: she'd pre-sighted the first trenchline long ago and already claimed eleven notches on her barrel over the past couple of days. Now that Eurasian troops had advanced and claimed that line, she was now onto the second, this one.
Yet the trenches were empty. Completely so, in fact. Not a single enemy soldier could be seen. The machine gun nests were abandoned, as were the sentry posts. While the possibility wasn't exactly zero, Helen highly doubted that the
entire
American battalion she was facing down possessed optical camouflage.
Aside from the apparent absence of enemy combat personnel, the most notable part of the entire spectacle was a huge, desiccated-looking baobab tree, with the trenches adjacent to it. The trunk must have been about three metres thick, with the bark stripped slightly by wind erosion.
There was, of course, only one problem: baobabs didn't grow in this part of the Sahara desert.
Helen couldn't help but smirk.
A camouflage tree? Really?
She searched the tree from afar, looking for a viewport to shoot through -- a free kill was a free kill, after all, and at this point she was starting to get desperate. The bloodlust was starting to itch her mind. Again. Yet the absence of a viewport continued to deny her her wants.
Suddenly Helen's smirk warped into fright.
If it doesn't have a visual port, it's probably got IR snoopers. Fuck.
Her ghillie camouflaged her well enough against the sandy outcrop to hide her from all but the most inquisitive onlookers, but a high-power camera was an entirely different affair. Knowing the Yanks, if the trench was empty before she got here, she was likely in artillery range.
She switched her cyberoptics to look for radio waves and electrical charge. No waves could be seen emanating from the tree, or going toward it. A thin wire was visible from the tree though, trailing back to the trench.
Okay. So it's obviously some sort of watch post. Nobody seems to be inside it though. Hm... Worth an investigation?
It took another hour for Helen to belly-crawl to the trench, by which time the midday sun hung overhead like a spotlight. The temperature readout on her HUD declared a balmy 71 degrees C -- just above average for the mid-22nd century West African midsummer.
Helen was just about relieved to be out of the sunlight as she crept into the trench like a cat, landing into a crouch, handgun at the ready. Her audial sensors were cranked up to max; she hadn't heard or seen anyone else in the time taken to get here. But next to the tree there was a dugout leading underneath the trenchline. And she heard voices. American ones.
So there ARE people here. Better make this quick, then scarper.
A small hatch door led into the tree from the underside, with Helen carefully opening it to ensure it didn't creak and alert the guards. When she looked inside though, she tilted her head with surprise.
The tree was empty.
Peering in revealed that initial assessment to not be entirely accurate. There was a flickable switch, much like a domestic lightswitch. That must be for whatever that wire leads to. There was a mirror built into the ceiling, prompting a raised eyebrow from the ever-curious Helen. Four circular holes had been drilled into the sides, each one just big enough for her to fit her hand through, apparently leading to different, similarly-sized chambers inside the tree. As she closed the hatch door behind her and clambered up, she realised that three of the holes reached up to her head. The fourth one behind her was lower, reaching to her lower waist.
Then she saw the crudely-written sign on the top of the hatch beneath her.
