Watch the Skies: A Terran Republic Novel by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Beyond Terra Press
Published: 2021-09-21T04:00:00+00:00

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Aliza estimated that she and her fellow volunteers had walked through the dimly lit cavern for about fifteen minutes when daylight appeared in the distance. Given that they hadn’t made any significant turns to the right or left, it seemed the passage had cut almost directly through the plateau. But from what she remembered of the intelligence briefings, that made little sense: it should have been a much longer walk. Her curiosity piqued, Aliza focused on the opening of the tunnel in the distance, hoping to get a better idea of what they were looking at and where they would emerge.

The tunnel opened on the backside of an exposed rock formation. From the other side, Aliza surmised, it would look like it was part of the plateau, when in reality the formation stuck out along a small spur, creating a V-shaped canyon on the far side. Based on his observation position and planned route of approach, she knew Bo and the others had no idea it was there. Murphy might have seen the small notch from orbital sensors, but he likely hadn’t seen what it held.

Inside the vaguely triangular canyon, Aliza saw a sizable wall, at least ten meters high, to her far right. Men were assembling it from piles of loose rock and boulders. Above it, she saw the familiar point on the escarpment that she had seen and noted from the thermal pond outside Imsurmik. The rocks there were not the edge of the plateau but an eroded outcropping. She glanced quickly to the far left and saw a wide spring emerging from the rocks. The watercourse was mostly empty and the spring appeared to be flowing at half of its capacity, likely another casualty of the approaching Sear.

Near Camp Stark, there had been similar features carved by water and wind into the regional geography. This canyon resembled what Bo and the others called a box canyon, like the one she’d occupied and defended during the J’Stull Job, with the plateau twenty meters above them on both sides.

On the north side of the canyon, she saw two figures walking across the top of the rock formation. A hundred meters to her left, the two walls of the canyon merged. The mere presence of a secretly accessible box canyon met one of Colonel Murphy’s critical intelligence requirements. He’d asked for the location of any cache sites, and this was certainly one under construction. Everywhere she looked, the secure compound held equipment and storage containers. Some of them looked like nothing Aliza had ever seen. Several were so coated with dust and rust it was impossible to theorize what they might have been. Based on their condition, they might have sat in the exposed yard for years, maybe even longer.

Sergeant First Class Whittaker had once commented that the storage facilities at Camp Stark were a junkyard, and Aliza finally understood what he meant. She missed the grizzled veteran and his fatherly presence, but also imagined his ghostly finger

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