The Hawaiian Special Forces

Chapter 4

It was two days later that news outlets got footage of the remains of the terrorist compound. Aoloa watched the reporting through his comms feed, taking note of things that could have been missed, potential issues, etc. The footage showed charred human remains amongst the burned out buildings, the executed bodies of snipers in guard towers, and even played back some audio that the terrorists had leaked.

Of course, the terrorists were decrying the attack as an assault on Islam, Allah, and the natural order. They'd managed to get out some video of the berserkers barreling through the front gates, followed by members of the colony leaping over walls.

This won't go well. Somebody didn't activate the jammers to make sure that crap doesn't get out. Unless there was a hard wire out of the camp, then we'd have been screwed, anyway.

A quick scroll through the various media outlets revealed enormous interest in what the nature of the "monsters" that had destroyed the training camp might be. UPS Military High Command was offering no response to requests for comment. Instead, they were simply allowing media speculation to go where it might.

Needless to say, it was no surprise when, a couple hours later, all group leaders were called to a meeting with Commander Clarke. Aoloa, Kawikani, Kaimana, Iolana, Ailani, and Kanoa were all there.

"Who's responsible for allowing information to leak out?" he barked.

Iolana spoke up first. "Signal jammers were in place and operational, Sir. However, there was probably a satellite dish hard line that may have allowed them to upload live video until it was destroyed. That, combined with closed-circuit surveillance would have enabled the data leak."

"Why wasn't the satellite dish taken out of commission as the first operational concern?"

Aoloa spoke up with, "Terrain made targeting the dish locating the hard line before removing the guard towers tactically challenging. We needed to remove them before it was possible to properly search, and by that time the video feed was out. Thumper resolution wasn't able to pick up the hard line channel in the ground."

Commander Clarke nodded. "And the cameras themselves?"

Ailani offered, "They were most likely small cameras meant to observe without being detected. Based on news feeds and the released videos, they were embedded in nearly every structure for multiple angles on all visible sites. They were limited to standard light, only, so probably off-the-shelf spy cameras. My guess is our enemy has become desperate to understand how we're eliminating them so effectively and set up this camp as bait to draw us out. I suggest additional intel before any future strikes."

Their commander nodded his head. "Anything else to add?"

Kawikani spoke up to ask, "Sir, what is the plan for damage control, and what impact will that have on operational procedures going forward?"

"The videos are being reviewed. There is a tentative plan to indicate the sloth troops," here, he nodded to indicate Kawikani, "are regular humans inside our newest mechanized battle suits. We'll also indicate that the colony," he indicated Aoloa, "are using our newest high mobility suits. That will also explain the cast. We'd rather misdirect them as to what is tech and what is biological at this time. The reality is several governments are already aware that we have done some bio-engineering, but they're uncertain as to the degree of success we've had. Our intention is to keep it that way."

Everybody nodded.

"Dismissed!"

Aoloa headed back to the colony to report the events to his team.

Once he'd conveyed the results of the meeting, he waited for comments. Mele obliged with, "But do we have a way to find wires like that? I mean, they could be buried fairly deep. How do we make sure they're all cut?"

"Yeah!" Hanale chimed in. "How are we supposed to do that?"

Does he not understand that he's not tearing me down with this? "I'm sure the techs are working on that. I wouldn't be surprised if they have some sensors or something for us soon enough. The real problem is that any time spent scanning for data connections will slow down our assaults. That's something we want to try to avoid."

Hokulani, the runt girl, tentatively raised her hand. When acknowledged she asked, "Won't cutting the data line warn them something's wrong? We'd have to time it just right so nothing gets out, but it doesn't give warning."

"You're right," he admitted. "Do you want to make your primary role severing data lines, going forward? You're quick, so it won't slow your attack much, and the rest of us will be busy knocking out major defenses, anyway."

"Won't that put the berserkers at risk?" Keaka asked with a note of concern.

"I think keeping us secret is a bigger priority, right now. If more video of us gets out, they'll start developing new plans to counter our tactics. I don't want to have regular meetings like this after every mission."

After some more discussion, nobody came up with any better ideas. The meeting officially ended when half the colony was asleep, already.