Chapter 348 S.H.E. Operation - II

Along the northern edge of the district, the Griffon section had been circling the same corridor for a while, and the ground below no longer looked like a city.

The Phantom strings had torn open the old industrial blocks, and wherever a junction had been cut, the surface above it had sunk into wide, smoking pits. Some were large enough to swallow a street intersection.

In several places, the collapses had spread beyond the original strike areas. Roads had split apart, underground parking structures had caved in, and entire rows of buildings were leaning toward the enormous holes beneath them.

One particularly large industrial compound fell toward an enormous depression, leaving only the upper portions of two warehouses sticking out of the rubble.

Dust hung over everything, and through it the crews could see the dark mouths of passages that had been hidden under the buildings only a few hours earlier.

On the shared picture, the Hive was reacting, just as everyone had expected it to.

Infected markers poured out of the broken tunnels and ran for the nearest surviving passages, while smaller groups climbed toward the surface to get away from the collapses.

But the next strings landed on exactly those passages, or the Fires section dropped a salvo on the openings, and the markers went out in clusters.

One large group attempted to escape through a service tunnel beneath an old railway crossing.

They barely reached the surface when several artillery shells struck the surrounding ground.

The first explosions tore through the infected at the entrance. The following impacts collapsed the tunnel behind them, throwing concrete and earth across the railway embankment.

Those that survived the initial explosions were caught beneath the falling debris.

Several more infected climbed out through a nearby opening, only for another salvo to strike the area.

The opening disappeared.

"Griffon Four-One, swarm coming up from the eastern pit."

"Copy. Four-Two, take the left side."

The Apaches turned in a loose pair.

The insects rose from the opening like smoke and climbed toward the rooftops.

There were thousands of them, pouring out through the exposed passages in an attempt to escape the destruction underground.

But they had nowhere useful to go.

The thirty-millimeter guns tore into the cloud, their explosive rounds ripping apart groups of insects and scattering the remains across the broken rooftops.

The rocket pods followed, sending several salvos into the densest portions of the swarm.

Explosions spread through the insects, and whole sections of the cloud disappeared almost instantly.

A pair of Raptors crossed above them a moment later and took the higher concentrations, and what remained of the swarm broke apart and fell back into the dust.

Below, the ground was littered with dead infected.

Some were still crawling out from the damaged passages, only to be struck by the next burst of cannon fire.

Another group of larger infected attempted to climb the broken side of a nearby depression. They had managed to get halfway up when a series of explosions struck the edge above them.

Several meters of earth and concrete broke loose.

The infected disappeared beneath it.

"Four-One, eastern pit is clear."

"Copy. Moving to the next opening."

The Apaches continued along their assigned corridor.

The swarms were getting smaller every time they came up.

The first insect wave had been so dense that it looked like a moving storm over the broken blocks. By the time the Apaches finished their next attack run, great sections of it had been cut away.

More insects still emerged from the ground. Thousands at a time, then tens of thousands, until the open air above the breaches darkened again.

Raptors struck the higher concentrations while the Apaches tore apart the lower clouds. Aircraft from the newly established Silverpeak Airfield Bases were arriving in successive groups, replacing those returning to their assigned airfields for other reasons or taking up newly cleared lanes.

A Phantom formation crossed behind them, and the sky flashed over the western industrial sector. The explosion rolled through a whole line of underground chambers, sending dust and fragments high into the air.

Whatever filled those chambers was buried in one collapse.

Farther back, the MLRS crews kept firing, and the launchers had just reloaded before the next target list came through.

The PSML launchers were firing too, sending precision missiles into the heavily reinforced junctions while the MLRS batteries covered the wider areas.

The Armored Resupply Vehicles stayed parked beside the batteries while the loaders went on doing what they had been doing since the first salvo.

One battery finished its launch sequence just as another began.

Southern Command had divided the massed Fires formations into overlapping attack groups. While one group went through its next loading cycle, another fired.

That kept the bombardment moving across the underground network without waiting for the entire artillery force to be ready at the same moment.

The MLRS batteries were there to erase concentrations and collapse broad areas. PSML operators selected tougher junctions, hidden structural supports and targets requiring a much more accurate strike.

They were not interchangeable weapons. There was no need to use a precision-strike missile when a twelve-rocket salvo would do the job.

The staff officers updating the strike sheets had barely finished marking one destroyed sector when the next group of impact reports arrived.

More rockets crossed the sky toward the central district, landing on the remaining passages where the infected were attempting to regroup.

The ground shook repeatedly under the impacts.

A series of explosions struck a large underground chamber near the western side of the Hive. The surface above it heaved, cracked, and finally collapsed into the enormous space underneath.

Several neighboring buildings followed, their foundations dragged into the opening as the earth gave way.

On the Radar, hundreds of markers disappeared.

The infected that managed to escape were already running into the next designated strike area.

And the bombardment continued.

Whole sections of the underground network that had been crowded at the start of the operation were now empty lines, and the infected that remained were falling back along the few routes that still ran toward the center.

The Hive was still moving them, but it couldn’t move them faster than they were being destroyed.

At Southern Command’s headquarters, Brandon was following the bombardment through the shared Radar.

The underground network had already lost several of its major connections, and the infected concentrations that had occupied the outer districts were rapidly disappearing.

The bombardment was progressing faster than their previous operations.

Beside Brandon, the Southern Command intelligence staff were consolidating the aircrew recordings, Radar observations and confirmed strike areas into an enemy-loss assessment. That was their own work, not a result produced by the System.

The preliminary figure had already crossed eight million destroyed infected, with the estimate increasing as the staff reconciled chambers that had simply ceased showing biological activity. It was an estimate rather than a perfect kill count, especially where entire levels of the Hive collapsed on top of one another.

Brandon examined the number for a moment, then returned to the map.

Considering what they had just fired into the ground, he would have been more surprised if the Hive had somehow survived without losing millions.

One of the officers approached him.

"Commander, the first demolition targets have been cleared. Engineers confirm that the three outer access areas are opening up."

Brandon enlarged the central portion of the Radar.

Four distinct signatures remained visible beneath the district. Three were positioned around the central region, forming a rough triangle, while the fourth sat much farther inside the Hive.

Those were the four meteorite shards feeding the Hive. Retrieving them was the only way to put an end to the damned thing.

Despite the continuous bombardment, the signatures themselves hadn’t moved.

"Continue the bombardment," Brandon instructed.

The officer checked another report.

"Sir, the remaining infected are withdrawing toward the center. We’re seeing movement along the surviving passages."

Brandon watched several concentrations disappear as another series of explosions struck their routes.

The Hive was still attempting to reorganize its defenders, but there was simply too much fire coming down on it.

He expected the Broodmother to be troublesome, and it certainly had been during their earlier engagements.

But even that creature couldn’t do much when the entire underground network was being destroyed from multiple directions.

Brandon’s communicator suddenly rang.

"Silverpeak F.O. to Southern Command, Golden Eagle is airborne. I repeat, Golden Eagle is airborne. Valkyrie One is carrying the Commander toward the first target."

About damn time.

He smirked.

"Copy, Flight Ops." Brandon turned to the rest of the officers. "Notify our assigned units that Golden Eagle is en route to the first target."

"Understood!"