THE SARDINE CAN
INSIDE THE "LEVIATHAN" (MODIFIED AAV-P7/A1)
SUBMERGED SHELF - SOUTHERN COAST OF SECTOR 9
NOVEMBER 18, 2027
18:00 LOCAL TIME (T-MINUS 12 HOURS)
The air inside the armored transport tasted like recycled rubber, diesel fumes, and the metallic tang of sixty high-capacity magazines waiting to be fired. It was a thick, humid atmosphere that clung to the skin.
The Leviathan wasn't moving. It was sitting on a sediment shelf twenty meters below the surface of the Obsidian Sea, engine idling on low-power battery mode to minimize the acoustic signature. Outside, the water was pitch black. Inside, the only illumination came from the faint red glow of the instrument panels and the bioluminescent strips on the Delta Force operators' wrist-comps.
Captain Boris "Borz" Volkov, leader of the Spetsnaz "Zaslon" unit, shifted his weight. It was a futile gesture. The troop compartment of the AAV was designed for twenty standard infantrymen. It was not designed for five Russians wearing 6B45-M "Bastion" Heavy Assault Exoskeletons.
Every time Borz moved, the hydraulic servos in his shoulder whined, and his ceramite knee-plate clanked against the hull.
"This is bullshit," Sgt. Ivan "Sledge" Sokolov grumbled from across the aisle. He was trying to polish the lens of his thermal optics, but his armored gauntlets were too clumsy. "Twelve hours? We sit here for twelve hours? My legs are asleep. I will have deep vein thrombosis before we even see an enemy."
"Quiet, Ivan," Borz rumbled. His voice was deep, amplified slightly by the collar microphone of his suit. "Meditate. Visualize the kill."
"I am visualizing a toilet," Ivan retorted. "And a cigarette. Why are we here so early? Operation Thunderstrike does not start until dawn. We could be sleeping in a barracks at FOB Triton. Instead, we are marinating in a steel coffin at the bottom of a lake."
The hatch to the driver's copula hissed open.
Lieutenant "Hooch" Miller crawled through the narrow opening, dropping into the troop bay. He wasn't wearing armor yet—just his flight suit and a headset around his neck. He was holding a cardboard box.
"Careful with the 'C' word, big guy," Hooch said, stepping over the massive armored legs of the Russians. "Sailors are superstitious. You call a ship a coffin, the ocean might just agree with you."
Hooch tossed the box onto the diamond-plate floor. Packets of MREs spilled out.
"Chow time. I grabbed the good stuff. Jalapeño Cheese spread, Skittles, and Beef Ravioli. No Veggie Omelets, I promise."
Borz looked at the pilot, then at the clock on the wall.
"Pilot," the Russian said, leaning forward. The red light reflected off his scarred face. "Explain to me the logic. Why are we parked here twelve hours early? The oxygen scrubbers are already working overtime."
Hooch sat on a crate of 40mm grenades, ripping open a packet of crackers.
"You want the official answer, or the real one?"
"The real one," Borz said.
"The mechanics," Hooch chewed, swallowing dryly. "The civilian contractors McCaffrey flew in to pressure-seal this tub? They were shitting bricks. They finished the welding, tested the seals, and then practically sprinted to the portal back to Earth. They refused to stay on the continent a minute longer than necessary."
Hooch gestured to the silent hull around them.
"They said the water felt... wrong. Said it was watching them. So, once they bailed, we had to launch. If we stayed at the dock, some satellite or drone might have spotted us. Down here, under twenty meters of black water? We're invisible."
"Ghost" Riley, the Delta Force lead, looked up from his weapon maintenance. He was dismantling his SIG MCX Rattler with blindfolded precision.
"Better to be bored than dead," Ghost murmured. "Let the enemy scan the coast. We're just a rock on the sonar."
A heavy silence settled over the group. The only sound was the rhythmic thrum-thrum-thrum of the life support system and the faint creaking of the hull as the current shifted the vehicle.
Hooch picked up a pouch of peanut butter and kneaded it in his hands. He looked around the bay at the faces of these killers. The Russians were stone monoliths. The Delta guys were clinically detached. And then there was Viper, the Korean sniper, sitting in the corner like a statue, his eyes closed, his breathing almost undetectable.
"So," Hooch said, trying to break the oppressive atmosphere. "You guys heard about Harris, right? The Asset?"
Borz looked up. "We know the file. Genetic anomaly. Class-5 combatant. Dangerous."
"Yeah, but I mean... the guy," Hooch said. He chuckled nervously. "I kinda see him as a friend, you know? We had beers a few times. Well, I had beers. He drank... I don't know, motor oil or something. But he's a good dude. Quiet. But funny."
Hooch looked around for confirmation.
"Like, one time, we were in the mess hall, and this new recruit tries to arm-wrestle him. Harris doesn't even use his hand. He uses his pinky. And he still puts the kid through the table. But then—get this—he helps the kid up and buys him a soda. A monster wouldn't do that, right?"
Silence.
Absolute, dead silence.
Sledge stopped polishing his optics. He stared at Hooch.
Borz tilted his head, his expression unreadable.
In the corner, Viper opened one eye. He looked at Hooch with a mix of confusion and mild disgust, as if Hooch had just claimed to be best friends with a hurricane.
"You..." Borz started slowly, "You drank beer with the biological weapon?"
"He's not a weapon," Hooch defended, though his voice wavered slightly under the intense gazes. "He's just... Harris. He likes classic rock. He hates the rain."
"He ripped a Spider Matriarch's brain out with his hands," one of the Delta operators, Doc, pointed out softly.
"Well, yeah," Hooch shrugged. "He has a temper. But don't we all? I'm just saying... when we get down there, we're not just grabbing a package. We're grabbing one of the boys."
Borz stared at Hooch for another long second. Then, he let out a short, bark-like laugh.
"Americans," the Russian shook his head. "You try to pet the wolf. But very well, Pilot. If he is your 'boy,' we will bring him back."
Borz grabbed an MRE packet.
"Now, pass the Jalapeño Cheese. If I am to die underwater, I want to taste spice."
GDI HIGH-COMMAND
OFFICE OF GENERAL MCCAFFREY
THE AEGIS, GIBRALTAR
NOVEMBER 19, 2027
05:00 GST (T-MINUS 1 HOUR)
Four thousand miles away, the sun was just beginning to think about rising over the Atlantic.
General McCaffrey stood by his window, a mug of black coffee in his hand. He watched the runway lights of the airfield below. Bombers were taking off. Heavy transport planes. The overture to the distraction.
Sir Malcolm Hayes sat on the leather couch in the corner. He looked exhausted, but his mind was racing.
"Marcus," Hayes said, breaking the silence. "I've been going over the encounter data from Alpha Team's helmet cams. The ones the 'Wraiths' took down."
McCaffrey didn't turn. "And?"
"They aren't the Strain-K," Hayes said. "The movement patterns are wrong. The Strain-K—the zombies, the mutants—they're feral. Even the Exiles, the intelligent ones, they move with a certain... weight. Organic inefficiency."
Hayes pulled up a holographic display on the coffee table. It showed a wireframe reconstruction of the entity that had paralyzed Harris.
"Look at the articulation of the joints. Look at the speed. It intercepted a rifle swing from Harris. Do you know the Newton-force required to stop Harris Brown's arm mid-swing? It's like stopping a freight train."
"Exoskeletons?" McCaffrey asked, sipping his coffee.
"More than that," Hayes said. "I think they're hybrids. We know the Architects left behind technology. But what if they left behind... guardians? Or what if a faction of the Exiles found a way to merge biology with Architect hard-light constructs?"
Hayes shuddered.
"Futuristic, yes. But the aesthetic... the robes, the swords, the silence. It's like they're trying to emulate some ancient warrior caste. Ninjas, samurai... but evolved."
McCaffrey finally turned. He walked over to the giant map of the Omega Continent on the wall.
Most of it was black. Only the coastal slivers of Sector 1 through 5 were filled in with detail. Sector 7 was a topographic sketch. Sector 9—the Obsidian Sea—was a blank void.
"We have been on that continent for three years," McCaffrey said quietly. "We have thrown billions of dollars and thousands of lives at it. And do you know how much we have mapped? Fully mapped?"
"Ten percent?" Hayes guessed.
"Five," McCaffrey corrected. "Five percent. We are scratching at the door of a haunted house, Malcolm. We have no idea what lives in the basement. These 'Wraiths'... they might just be the pest control. We don't know who the landlord is."
McCaffrey checked his watch.
05:30 GST.
"It doesn't matter what they are," McCaffrey said, his voice hardening into steel. "Today, we find out if they bleed."
He walked to his desk and picked up the red phone.
"Connect me to the UNS Alliance. And signal the Zeus platform."
"Are we clear for the deception?" Hayes asked.
"Clear," McCaffrey said. "Launch the dummy operation. Make it loud."
INSIDE THE "LEVIATHAN"
T-MINUS 30 MINUTES
The atmosphere in the troop bay had shifted.
The boredom was gone. In its place was a cold, razor-sharp focus.
The white interior lights had been killed, replaced by low-level tactical red. It turned the condensation on the walls into looking like sweat and blood.
The Russians were fully helmeted now. Their "Bastion" exoskeletons hummed with power. The red visors of their helmets glowed in the gloom. They checked their weapons one last time—racking the bolts of the RPK-16s, checking the seals on the casket magazines.
Viper, the sniper, was applying a specialized gel to the lens of his rifle scope—a hydrophobic compound to prevent distortion from the mana-dense water.
Sgt. "Axle" Foley, the British Royal Marine driving the Leviathan, killed the idle mode.
The engine note changed. It deepened. A low vibration shuddered through the floorplates.
"Listen up!" Foley's voice crackled over the internal comms. "We are thirty mikes out. I'm moving us off the shelf and into the descent channel."
Foley patched the sonar feed to the troop bay monitors.
A green, grainy image appeared.
It showed a massive depression in the seabed. A sinkhole.
"Intelligence from the junior linguist was spot on," Foley briefed. "We are looking at a submerged caldera. Diameter is approximately 2.5 kilometers. Depth of the structure starts at 380 meters and goes down to... well, the sensors bottom out at 600."
"A city," Ghost whispered, looking at the jagged spikes rising from the hole.
"A superstructure," Foley corrected. "Sonar is picking up geometric patterns. Perfect circles. Triangles. This isn't natural rock formation. It's Architect-made."
Foley paused.
"Here's the plan. Once the bombardment starts topside, the acoustic sensors in that city are going to be overwhelmed. That's our window. I'm going to drift us right down the throat of the beast. We are aiming for a docking platform identified by the thermal scan."
"And the positions?" Borz asked, checking his ammo count.
"Mission Commander Vance—Colonel Iron Vance—will be relaying tactical positions once we breach the perimeter," Foley explained. "He's monitoring via the secure buoy we just deployed. He'll be our eye in the sky. Or... eye in the water."
Hooch, sitting in the co-pilot seat next to Foley, looked back at the team.
He held up his helmet with the terrible night vision monocular attached—a reminder of where they started.
"Hey," Hooch said. "Nobody plays hero. We grab the package, we grab the Asset, and we leave. If you see a portal opening... run the other way. We don't know where they lead."
"We do not run," Borz said, his voice digitized by the helmet. "We advance in the other direction."
"Same thing," Hooch muttered. "Just... watch your six."
06:00 LOCAL TIME
SURFACE: SECTOR 7 (THE MOUNTAINS)
The sun broke the horizon.
And the world ended.
Five miles off the coast, the UNS Alliance fired its main batteries.
CRAAAAACK-THOOM.
The sound was so loud it flattened the waves. Two tungsten slugs, moving at Mach 7, tore through the air. They slammed into the peak of the mountain closest to the Spider Hive.
The impact was blinding. Millions of tons of rock were vaporized instantly.
High above, in the stratosphere, the orbital platform Zeus released a kinetic rod. It fell like a meteor, silent until it hit the atmosphere, then screaming like a banshee. It struck the second target zone with the force of a tactical nuclear weapon.
The ground shook. The air burned.
It was a display of god-like power.
Every sensor in the Omega continent screamed. Every eye turned North.
UNDERWATER: SECTOR 9
Inside the Leviathan, the bombardment felt different.
It wasn't a sound. It was a pressure.
THUD.
THUD.
The water around them vibrated. The hull groaned as the shockwaves from the distant impacts traveled through the bedrock.
"Acoustic camouflage is active!" Foley yelled over the engine roar. "The whole ocean is ringing like a bell! They won't hear us coming!"
"Green light!" McCaffrey's voice cut through the comms, distorted by distance and water but unmistakable. "Operation Shattered Glass is a go. execute. Execute. Execute."
Foley slammed the throttle forward.
The Leviathan surged. It tipped its nose down, diving off the edge of the shelf.
They plummeted into the abyss.
"Passing 100 meters," Foley called out.
"Passing 200 meters."
"Pressure holding."
"Look," Hooch whispered.
Through the reinforced glass of the cockpit, the darkness began to recede.
Below them, the City Beneath the Mirror came into view.
It was breathtaking. And terrifying.
Towers of obsidian and glass twisted upward, glowing with a soft, malevolent violet light. Bridges of hard-light energy connected the spires. It was a silent, underwater metropolis, perfectly preserved, ancient and cold.
"Target sighted," Viper said calmly. "The Cathedral. Central plaza."
"We have movement," Sparks yelled from the gunner's seat. "I see patrols! But they aren't looking up! They're looking North! The distraction worked!"
Foley wrestled the controls, fighting the density of the mana-infused water.
"Brace for impact! I'm putting us down on the western terrace! 10 seconds!"
In the back, the Gravediggers stood up.
The safety harnesses clicked open.
Borz racked the charging handle of his RPK.
Ghost checked the suppressor on his rifle.
They were fifteen men against a city of ghosts.
"5..." Foley counted down.
"4..."
"3..."
"2..."
"1..."
The tracks of the Leviathan hit the glass pavement of the alien city with a heavy, metallic CLANG.
"GO! GO! GO!" Borz roared.
The rear ramp dropped.
The ocean rushed in—no, not ocean. The breathable, mana-field generated by the city kept the water out of the plaza, but the transition was violent.
The Gravediggers charged out of the vehicle and into the violet light of the unknown.