Enemy Lines: Navigator Book One Read online

  Enemy Lines

  (NAVIGATOR Series BOOK ONE)

  SD TANNER

  Enemy Lines

  Copyright © SD Tanner 2016

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by law.

  Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Dedicated to Mousey

  Table of Contents

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE: Wednesday’s Child (Leon)

  CHAPTER TWO: Blinded by the sight (Twenty-one)

  CHAPTER THREE: Siren’s song (Steve)

  CHAPTER FOUR: Friendly fire (Jonesy)

  CHAPTER FIVE: Twilight Flight (John)

  CHAPTER SIX: Gift wrapped (Leon)

  CHAPTER SEVEN: Homeward bound (Steve)

  CHAPTER EIGHT: Step up or out (Jonesy)

  CHAPTER NINE: Graduation Day (Dayton)

  CHAPTER TEN: Home Sweet Home (Leon)

  CHAPTER ELEVEN: Until death do us part (Jonesy)

  CHAPTER TWELVE: A little respect (Jo)

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Hard landing (Leon)

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN: Waking nightmare (Ally)

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN: Born again (Steve)

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN: Eyes without a face (Ark)

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: Lost in the city (Bill)

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: Witch under the bed (Dayton)

  CHAPTER NINETEEN: Last man standing (Leon)

  CHAPTER TWENTY: Sight to behold (Lexie)

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: Stepping up (Jonesy)

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: Bolt hole in hell (Leon)

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: Lemmings (Lexie)

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: No place to run (Leon)

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: Moving on (Bill)

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: Bloodless coup (Ark)

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: Earth redefined (Leon)

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT: Mankind redefined (Jonesy)

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE: Running blind (Bill)

  CHAPTER THIRTY: New Army (Leon)

  EPILOGUE (Steve)

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  To keep the action exciting this story is told through multiple points of view. Please see the character name in the Chapter heading to know which person is narrating.

  For other series by SD Tanner, please check out the Hunter Wars series, Hunter Wars Series.

  I really hope you enjoy the Navigator series. Book Two of the Navigator series Blind Sighted is now available.

  PROLOGUE

  The blue planet was covered in water and wide expanses of rich earth. Lifeforms were already living on the land and in the sea, but it would be millennia before it would erupt with even more life, and a single species would dominate. Civilizations would grow and die before it would be time, but when it was, they would harvest the planet and take everything it had to offer. All it took was a little forward planning.

  CHAPTER ONE: Wednesday’s Child (Leon)

  It was Wednesday. Wednesday’s child was full of woe, but that only worked for the day you were born, and not the day you died.

  His knees were pressing into the hard, rocky ground and his face was covered. With his head bent, his hands were tied behind his back, and men were talking in a language he didn’t understand. He assumed Billy and Tuck were next to him, and they would also be on their knees with their hands bound together. Brief gusts of wind were causing the sand on the surface of the land to skitter, and he could hear an animal screaming in fear somewhere in the compound. At least he hoped it was an animal.

  They shouldn’t have been caught so easily. Mike had been driving the HUMVEE, and they were heading to the forward operating base. The area was supposed to be relatively secure, and the RPG had caught them by surprise. It had hit the front of the truck, flipping it over, and it had landed on its side with a sickening crunch. The enemy had literally swarmed them in numbers he’d never dealt with before, and there’d been no time to react before they were roughly dragged out of the badly damaged vehicle. Under the crush of arms, legs and demanding hands, they’d been stripped of their weapons and thrown into a truck, trussed like the prisoners they now were.

  Mike hadn’t been in the truck with him, only Billy and Tuck, and he couldn’t work out whether he was dead or in another vehicle. With what felt like a scarf tied around his face, he hadn’t been able to see anything, and trapped in the back of the truck, they’d whispered urgently to one another about what would happen next. Their best-case scenario was they would find a way to escape, but more likely they would be held prisoner, potentially for years. Their families would plead and the government would negotiate, but before that happened, he expected to be tortured for information he didn’t have. It was every soldier’s nightmare to be caught by the enemy, held against their will, and unable to defend themselves.

  The truck had rumbled along slowly, and every unpredictable bump had jarred him. His body felt bruised, but adrenalin was overriding any injuries he might have. When the truck had finally stopped, he’d been hauled outside and dumped to the ground. Someone had pulled him onto his knees, and while he was forced to kneel with his head bent, their captors seemed to be arguing about something

  His mind drifted to Amelia and their unborn son. The only reason he knew they were having a boy was the excited call they’d managed to have three weeks earlier. She’d fallen pregnant in the first week they’d known one another, and they’d married only two weeks before he left for his tour. Life was tough and there was never enough money. All they had was a small one-bedroom apartment in Seattle, and now he needed to scrape together enough cash to find them a house. Amelia and his son needed him, and he frantically tried to think of a way to escape.

  The scarf was suddenly yanked from his head, and blinking to clear his vision, he looked around. They’d been taken to a compound of low, flat roofed, shanty houses, and there were at least forty enemy soldiers surrounding them. They were all heavily armed with a wide range of old guns, some of which he didn’t even recognize.

  The skinny men all looked the same, and they were no more than ten feet away, staring at them with expressions he couldn’t read. Without warning, his head was yanked abruptly to the left, and he felt something scrape against the extended tendons on his neck. Desperately moving his eyes, he saw a flat blade reaching from his shoulder. Two weights clamped hard on his calves, and he was held firmly in position. The blade began to move back and forth, crudely tearing into his flesh, and a warm wetness spread down his chest.

  “No!” He roared angrily.

  Fighting against the steel grip holding him in place, he heard Billy begin to pray.

  CHAPTER TWO: Blinded by the sight (Twenty-one)

  “Nav Two One, do you copy?” The smooth voice asked.

  When she didn’t answer, it said more urgently, “Nav Two One, I repeat, do you copy?”

  Running hard, she wished Ark would shut up. She was in full combat gear and that was never comfortable. The first layer was a body stocking filled with microscopic wires that measured every detail of her physical condition, and allowed her to control the screens no one else could see. The next layer was made up of hydraulic based rods designed to give her a strength and speed she wouldn’t ot
herwise naturally have. The final layer of her gear was a liquid-based armor, reinforced by additional plates strapped across her chest, shoulders and thighs. Whenever she was hit by a bullet or a sharp blow, that area on her armor would stiffen with the impact. Strapped on top of all of the layers was a small oxygen tank to supplement her breathing when needed, and she had a wide flat water pack on her back. Several heavy weapons were attached to her arms, and she carried additional ammo around her waist. All up her kit weighed over two hundred pounds, and given she was only a hundred twenty pounds, it would have been impossible to carry it without the added strength of the hydraulics.

  “Two One, quit being a pain in the ass,” Ark said amiably. “I can see your readings. I know you’re conscious and you can hear me.”

  Ark was her shadow Navigator and he was safe and sound in Johnsondale. Through a collection of three-dimensional screens, he could see what she could. Right now, he would be sitting in his enormous, well-padded chair, observing her visuals, and tracking her ammo and physical condition. It was his job to make sure she didn’t miss anything through her visor and to direct her in combat. The visor tech was the whole purpose of the kit she wore, and it gave her advanced vision. She could see through barriers and identify weapons up to three miles away, and if a Navigator was travelling with a military squad, it would be impossible to ambush them in any way. Having little combat experience, Ark helped her to interpret what she was seeing. He’d been a soldier for ten years, until he was wounded in combat and lost both his legs and half of his face. She assumed his face wasn’t a pretty sight, but she didn’t really know.

  Inside her helmet, she could see a collection of screens, but unlike a television, they provided her with a cartoon version of real life, not that she knew what anything really looked like. The pinkish blobs were people, vehicles were outlined bumps, and weapons were highlighted by red circles. The ground was shown as a grid, with outlined lumps and bumps telling her there was a rock or some other impenetrable object in her way. Walls were a greyed area, and she could see the outlines of anything behind them, whether it was a person, furniture or weapons. She could adjust the distance of her visibility, or zoom in on a specific area with a flick of her wrist. Nothing was hidden from her, and even if their enemy buried a bomb, it emitted a signal her visor could interpret.

  For all the capabilities a Navigator had, they lacked one critical sense. For the visor to work, her eyes had been modified. Gone were her original dark brown eyes and they’d been replaced with steel-colored orbs. The orbs contained tiny onboard computers that interacted with her visor screens and translated the data into her brain. Without her visor, she was blind and being so new, the technology had other weaknesses. If she kept the visor on for longer than twelve hours, she developed a migraine that was so bad it often left her physically ill.

  Still running at twenty miles per hour, she took a drag on her oxygen pipe, and said breathlessly, “I’m busy.”

  She was busy. Being a civilian and a contractor for CaliTech, she didn’t work for the Army. Her job was to test the new technology, not to use it in anger, but the program was failing and the Army were refusing to continue funding. In a desperate attempt to prove it could work, she’d been told to run her tests in combat. The senior executives had assured her she’d be assigned to an army squad, and not expected to undertake missions alone. Their promises had translated to her being dumped at a base, and immediately sent on a mission to retrieve the squad she’d been assigned to, but never met. The technology was so new it hadn’t even been announced in the press, and if their combat testing failed, it might never be.

  This wasn’t what she’d signed up for, and part of her was angry at being forced into active duty. She wasn’t even a soldier. Being born blind had meant she’d lived a sheltered life with her overprotective parents. Determined to strike out on her own, two years earlier she’d moved in with her sister, Shelley. She and Shelley were close, and it had been working out well until her sister had died in a car accident. Her parents had told her to move in with them again, but she hadn’t wanted to. For a while she’d lived on her savings, but when she began to run out of money, she’d looked for a job and found CaliTech. The only qualification she’d needed to get the job was to be willing to have her eyes replaced with the computerized orbs.

  “You’ve got forty-five people half a mile ahead. All are armed with AK-47s, and our three guys are in the middle of it,” Ark said steadily.

  She felt a flutter of anxiety. “What do I do?”

  “Two of them are also armed with fifty cals and one has an RPG,” Ark replied. “You need to target them first.”

  No amount of armor would protect her from .50-cal weapons or an RPG, and she stopped and stood with her legs astride, adjusting the distance on her visor. The scene in front of her was immediately overlaid with a grid, and she could see the weapons and position of every person standing around the three men on their knees. Their weapons glowed eerily on her screen, and if she tapped the person, a popup appeared with a description of their weapon, ammo, recent use, distance to her and threat level.

  Tapping her screen, she targeted the two men with the .50-cal guns and the one with the RPG. If anyone was watching her, they’d think she was pointing at nothing, but the sensor wires in her gear relayed the message to the onboard computer in her orbs and visor. The computer detected a metal blade was being held against the neck of one of the men, and she could guess what was happening. They were executing the man in the crudest way possible, and a flash of indignant anger cut through her anxiety.

  Raising her right arm, she deliberately kept her voice calm. “Auto target.”

  The main gun was fitted to her right forearm. It fired rapid or single shots, and the bullet would travel down her arm, exiting through a barrel built into her heavily protected gloves. Auto targeting wasn’t ideal, but it was all she really knew how to do with any certainty. She wasn’t a soldier, and nor was she trained to act like one. She often wondered what she’d gotten herself into when she agreed to become a tester for their technology. Given she was already blind, agreeing to replace her eyes with steel orbs had been a no-brainer, but now she realized CaliTech would own her forever. The technology didn’t maintain itself, and she needed their ongoing medical and technical support. If she ever wanted to be free of CaliTech, then she’d have to be willing to be blind again. They would remove her orbs, take away her visor, and give her useless prosthetic eyeballs.

  “Take the shots,” Ark ordered. “And then move at top speed to the compound.”

  “You mean shoot the assholes and then run at the bad guys, right?” She asked dourly.

  Without waiting to hear Ark’s reply, she squeezed her fist, using her index finger to press a trigger on her glove at the base of her hand. With the one movement, she’d instructed her weapon to fire at the designated targets. Even through the heavy armor, she could feel the buck of the gun and the bullets leaving the chamber. The hydraulics automatically moved her arm, and through her visor, she watched all three targets fall as quickly as three shots could leave her weapon.

  When she hesitated to move, Ark shouted through her earpiece, “Go! Go! Go!”

  The urgency in his voice raised her anxiety levels another notch, and without any thought, she began to sprint towards the enemy.

  “Fire! Fire!” Ark roared.

  The screen on her visor filled with bright, sparking lights, and she knew she was being fired at. As she ran at twenty-five miles an hour into the flashing, she felt her body being thrown by each bullet that found its mark. Her armor was hardening all over her body, but she ran on relentlessly. The armor might stop the bullets from penetrating, but the sharp impact made it bulge into her body, which could leave her bruised or potentially injured.

  “Can’t see!” She screamed.

  There was so much gunfire her visor was becoming nothing more than brilliant white light. She was panting and her rising panic threatened to engulf her. All she wanted to
do was fall to the ground and curl up into a ball. She didn’t want this job. She was contracted to test the equipment and provide feedback to the designers. When they’d told her she was assigned to an active military squad, she’d argued she wasn’t a soldier and had no interest in being one. The sleazy guy from Legal had pointed to a clause in her contract about ‘Advanced Testing’. The equally sleazy Accounts rep had given her a spiel about her country needing her. They’d made it clear to her that she could either do this, or they would send her back to a world of never ending darkness.

  “Calm down, Two One,” Ark said steadily. “Auto targeting is on. Your onboard computer is firing at will.”

  Without her noticing, while she ran, her right arm with the primary weapon was moving under the control of her visor computer. It was returning fire with deadly accuracy, and her screen was becoming less filled with flashing lights. When her screen flashed she was low on ammo, she continued to run and reload at the same time. In just over a minute, she’d cleared the half-mile across the sand and was almost on top of the enemy position. The three men, once trapped in the middle of the group, were now on their feet and were fighting with the enemy. Her visor computer recognized them as belonging to her, and she knew there was no chance she would accidentally shoot them.

  Her guys were moving away from the enemy, leaving a trail of injured and dead people behind them. She continued to fire and soon more bullets were directed at the enemy. Her guys were using the enemies’ weapons against them. Her screen was flashing. She was low on ammo again, but she’d used everything she had. Her screen began to flash red, and now she was low on power too. Another glitch with the technology was when it was used at full force it drank the power packs. She hated the gear, it was buggy. If she ran out of power, she’d lose the hydraulics and eventually her visor, which would leave her blind and unable to move. Realizing she had no more than a few minutes of power left, she began to panic.