Chapter 1: Get Lit

As the infrared goggles came down over my eyes, the forest lit up with an otherworldly glow. A lot of people would have gone for the night vision goggles; that would be a mistake. It's true that night vision would give you a more brightly illuminated view of the scene, but throwing more light on camouflage doesn't always work. The better the camouflage, the less it works.

The visible spectrum is where lies are told. Infrared goggles show you the truth. They let you see bands of light that were always there, invisible, casting a silent confession to anyone who bothers to look. Instead of looking at the colors or even the textures of the world in front of you, infrared goggles let you see the truth about the nature of things. What they're made of. Hot or cold.

That's what made the reinforced concrete pillbox standout plain as day. I couldn't see what was going on inside very well. But the concrete stuck out like a sore thumb, no matter how well hidden under nets and branches. The heat gave them away. There was nothing they could do about it. When you have the tools to see things the way they really are, you have a huge advantage over the rest of humanity.

Slowly, silently, I keyed in some commands on the interface module on my wrist. Suddenly, two quadcopter drones came buzzing into the clearing from about 50 yards away. They were really moving, traveling side-by-side in formation. My inertial defensive field powered up at the same time. Here we go...

Machine-gun fire erupted from the pillbox, managing to hit one of the drones. It erupted into a ball of flame and dropped from the sky, in a ball of flame that ignited the grass in the clearing. The other drone kept moving like a rocket. It narrowly cleared the top of the pillbox, and an explosion thundered from the structure as it passed.

When the smoke cleared, I could see that my second drone had accomplished its objective - mostly. There wasn't a ton of damage. My calculations must have been off. The shock wave from the first explosion must've affected the flight path just enough that the charges had not gone through the opening in the front.

The good news was I had loaded sticky charges as payload. I didn't want a miss bouncing off that dome, so I coated the quad's payload with some adhesive. When it missed the opening, the charge still stuck to the wall so the damage that was done managed to crack the front wide open.

Well, not wide open. After all, this was reinforced concrete. But there was definitely room to get in. Plus, now I could see had heads bobbing around inside. I stayed back on the tree line and checked my gear.

I put down the M4 and pulled the sniper rifle out of my inventory. I took off the infrared goggles and peered through the scope. The scope used night vision which at this point was just as well, because between the fire and the explosion, all the heat in the area had made IR less effective.

Another burst of machine-gun fire blasted out of the pillbox on the same trajectory the drones had come in on, then a longer burst directed lower towards the tree line on the same vector. I took my time. One of the guys inside the pillbox was really moving around now, probably looking for an ammo refill. The gunner was holding pretty still now, maybe out of ammo, maybe not. I squeezed the trigger.

The first shot missed, which was a real shame because it gave away my position. I had already started to reload in the microsecond before the machine-gun fire started up again, this time in my direction.

Lucky for me it was short-lived. Once I got the next round in and looked back through the scope, I could see knucklehead number two darting back to the gunner's position with the ammo. I could see the gunner yelling for him to hurry as he frantically scanned the tree line to find me. I could see the gunner's head explode as my next round went through it.

I had no time to spare. I got up and started running, swapping the sniper rifle for the M4 as I ran. I could see the other guy inside, fumbling with the ammo belt as he struggled to reload the machine gun. I couldn't let that happen. Still running, I pulled the M4 up to my shoulder and started firing in short bursts. He didn't take any damage because he hit the floor just before I started shooting, but it slowed him down and I kept running for him.

20 yards to go.
He wasn't bobbing his head up, so I stopped shooting.
10 yards.
Where was that grenade? He got the ammo belt in his hand again.
5 yards.
He dropped the belt. That's bad for one of us.
3 yards.
I took a flying leap to clear the razor wire. I still had the M4 on him, and I was guessing he didn't know that I had one burst left. A flash came from his muzzle. Funny, I thought he was out.

My inertia field took the brunt of it, but I still took a bullet. Not a critical hit, but it hurt like hell. I managed to put all three of mine into him. Thankfully, it was enough to finish the job. He went down. I landed against the concrete pillbox, less than gracefully. Pulling myself up over the edge of the opening, I could see the tiny structure was now vacant.

I crawled through the hole I blew in the pillbox and made myself at home.

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This is my first fiction on Steemit. Thanks for reading!

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