RTS System in the Apocalypse: New World

Two Guardian APCs slowed several meters before the barricade blocking the Conservatory service road.

"Bastion One-Three. We’re at the observation post."

The rear ramp lowered with a hiss from the hydraulics. Ten passengers occupied the troop compartment.

Matilda’s four-person team sat along one side, with Specter Squad opposite them. Marcus and Evelyn occupied the remaining seats with their equipment between their boots.

The ride from Main Base had been quiet.

The DASFs had little reason to talk, while Marcus had spent most of the trip reviewing the recovered Directorate references on his tablet. Evelyn occasionally looked through the vision block beside her, watching the scenery disappear beneath the mist as they approached the western bypass.

Matilda stood first.

"Dismount."

The eight DASFs moved out before Marcus and Evelyn followed.

A thin white mist covered the road outside.

It was nowhere near dense enough to block the Conservatory from view, but the air carried the same strange separation Hans had described in the briefing. The fog gathered around the park and the surrounding trees instead of spreading evenly across the bypass.

Beyond the barricade, the damaged glass domes remained visible through it.

The Central Dome stood above the others.

Its broken upper section had not changed much from the old Raptor recordings, although the vegetation around it had.

Vines covered more of the remaining glass. Several had already crossed the collapsed outer fence and spread into the service area facing the road.

Behind them, Bastion One-Four stopped.

Its ramp came down shortly afterward.

Engineers emerged with survey equipment and sealed cases, followed by the medical-hazard team carrying their own sampling and protective gear. They remained near the vehicles while the perimeter troops made room for the additional equipment.

The officer overseeing the observation post approached Matilda.

He wore the same field gear as the soldiers around the barricade, with his rifle slung while he crossed the secured side of the road.

"Fairy?"

"That’s me."

"The Commander said you’d be taking over the inspection."

"Only the investigation. Your people keep the road and the outer perimeter."

"Understood."

He turned toward the barricade.

"We haven’t crossed the fence since the post went up. Patrols checked both sides of the bypass and the service roads around the park, but nobody entered."

"Any movement?"

"Inside, yes."

The officer gestured toward the Conservatory.

"Mostly infected. We’ve seen them through the broken sections of the smaller domes and along some of the interior walkways. Nothing has crossed the fence since we arrived."

"Anything unusual?"

"As from that thing? Nothing else."

Matilda turned toward the park.

"Show us what you’ve covered."

The officer stepped aside and led them toward the forward observation position.

The barricade itself was only the outermost part of the security line.

Farther back along the bypass, a small System position occupied a cleared section of higher ground. A Power Plant supplied the local grid while a Physical Radar Facility turned slowly above the surrounding defensive emplacements.

Hans had apparently decided that visual observation alone was not enough.

The Radar’s coverage extended well beyond the Conservatory.

Several hostile markers already occupied the tactical picture around the park. Most remained beneath the glass domes or along the interior walkways, while another concentration sat closer to the Central Dome.

None had approached the barricade.

"Radar has been tracking them since the post came online," the officer said. "Movement changes occasionally, but nothing has left the park."

Matilda studied the positions.

"Any contacts underneath us?"

"Nothing confirmed below ground."

That did not mean there was nothing there.

The Radar had never been perfect through dense structures, terrain or whatever else the Conservatory had become.

Specter signaled his squad forward while Bar, Saint and Vesper followed Matilda. Marcus and Evelyn remained between the two DASF elements, with the Engineers and medical team moving behind them once their equipment had been unloaded.

Nobody crossed the barricade yet

Matilda brought up the local tactical picture instead.

The Physical Radar had already done most of the easy work for them. Red markers occupied several of the smaller domes and the walkways between them, with the largest concentration remaining around the Central Dome.

None were close enough to the outer fence to interfere with the survey.

"Outer perimeter first," Matilda said. "We verify the fence, service roads and anything connected to the park from outside. Nobody enters until we’re done."

Specter acknowledged the order.

The Engineers moved ahead with their survey equipment while the DASFs spread around them. Marcus kept the Directorate records open on his tablet, checking service references and property identifiers whenever the team reached another part of the Conservatory perimeter.

Evelyn worked farther forward with the field element.

They started along the eastern side of the fence.

The first several hundred meters gave them little that the old Raptor footage had not already shown.

Sections of iron fencing had collapsed beneath vines and fallen branches. Other portions remained upright but were almost completely buried beneath vegetation. Several public walkways were still visible inside, though roots had forced themselves through the paving and lifted entire sections of concrete.

The smaller domes were worse.

Some still retained most of their glass. Others had lost entire panels, leaving their interiors exposed to the surrounding air. Plants had grown through the openings and crossed between structures that had once been kept separate.

A red contact shifted on Matilda’s tactical picture.

Specter raised one hand.

The group stopped.

A figure appeared through one of the broken glass sections several seconds later.

Its clothing had deteriorated almost completely, while dark plant matter covered portions of its arms and legs. It wandered onto the interior walkway, remained there for a few seconds, then disappeared behind the vegetation again.

Nobody fired.

The infected never approached the fence.

"Still inside," Specter said.

"Leave it."

They continued.

The mist followed the park much more closely than the terrain around it.

Outside the fence, wind moved through the roadside grass and the upper branches of the surrounding trees. Inside, the white haze remained spread between the domes with little visible change.

One of the medical personnel stopped near a damaged section of fencing.

"I can collect from here."

Matilda looked at the vines that had already crossed onto the secured side of the road.

"Without entering?"

"Yes."

"Do it."

The medical team isolated a short section extending beyond the fence. Leaves, surface residue and condensed moisture went into separate containers rather than one combined sample.

Nothing unusual happened during the collection, which suited everyone just fine.

The samples returned to Bastion One-Four while the rest continued around the perimeter.

The southern service side gave them something more useful.

An Engineer stopped beside what remained of a maintenance entrance. The public gate had collapsed inward, but much of the concrete surrounding it remained intact. Several pipes emerged beneath the wall before disappearing under soil and root growth.

He cleared enough of the surface to expose them properly.

Marcus came over.

"What have you got?"

"Water distribution. Electrical conduit too."

The Engineer uncovered another section.

"And another line underneath."

Marcus checked the public Conservatory plan on his tablet. Only the ordinary greenhouse feeds were marked there.

He looked back at the exposed utilities.

"Those aren’t on the public plan."

"No."

Neither of them sounded particularly surprised. Restricted facilities did not generally advertise everything connected to them.

The useful question was where the lines went.

The Engineer traced the visible direction before bringing one of the survey units closer.

One branch continued toward the Central Dome. Another turned into a maintenance building farther inside the grounds.

A deeper line appeared to continue toward the same service section without following the public irrigation network at all.

"Mark it," Matilda said.

The Engineer recorded the position. They continued along the service boundary.

More signs of a separate infrastructure layer appeared as they moved.

Several isolation valves sat inside reinforced maintenance housings. Drainage from two of the domes did not join the public runoff route. A buried electrical conduit followed one of the staff roads before turning toward the same maintenance building.

The power distribution around that section was also heavier than what the public-facing structures seemed to require.

Marcus stopped beside one of the service markers.

He cleaned enough dirt from the metal plate to read what remained of the identification number.

Then he checked his tablet.

"This contractor appears in the Directorate material."

Matilda came closer.

"The same one from the briefing?"

"Same company family."

"What does Central say about this part of the park?"

"Almost nothing."

Marcus opened the relevant entry.

"The service property appears in protected-delivery references and the counterintelligence case. No technical description survived with it."

Evelyn returned from farther along the fence.

"There’s another service entrance west of here."

"Open?"

"Partially collapsed. The approach is screened from the main road. The lane bends behind the trees before reaching the gate, so you wouldn’t see vehicles at the entrance unless you were already on the service road."

Marcus checked the records again.

"That matches one of the access references."

"Is it exact?"

"Not equally, but the direction does fit."

They continued around the southern perimeter.

By the time the team reached the western side, the pattern had become clearer.

The Conservatory still looked like a public botanical facility because that was exactly what most of it had been.

Visitor entrances.

Walkways.

Glass domes.

Irrigation.

Maintenance access.

But another layer ran through parts of it.

Separate utilities.

Protected service routes.

Additional isolation hardware.

Restricted deliveries that had mattered enough for SAS Central to connect them with another investigation.

None of it explained what had been happening here. It only confirmed that there was more to the Conservatory than what visitors had been allowed to see.

Matilda checked the maintenance building again.

"Engineer."

"Fairy?"

"Can you survey that without entering the grounds?"

"Not properly. Too much material between us and the structure."

"What about the western service entrance?"

"That’s a better approach."

Matilda turned toward Specter.

"We finish the perimeter and use that entrance."

Specter glanced toward the red contacts still scattered across the Radar picture.

"The Central Dome?"

"Not yet."

That was where most of the infected were concentrated. There was no reason to walk directly into them before they understood the rest of the park.

Marcus closed one of the Directorate files.

"The western service route is also the better place to start if we’re looking for what exactly the SAS team was protecting here."

"Do you recognize something within?"

"The route, not the building."

He brought the access reference back up.

"This puts restricted service activity on the western side. That’s all the surviving record gives us."

He brought the old SAS reference back up. Matilda looked toward the western entrance.

"Good thing we brought you here. That’s where we start."

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