Mateo watched from his LATV as the goblins holding shields slowly walked out of the portal. It seems even three goblins could barely carry the think wood shields. Seeing the threat Mateo didn't hesitate to give the order.
"Fire! Don't let them group up around the portal!"
The three teams, stationed around each of the three vehicles, were spread out in an arc around the portal. This gave them great intersecting lines of fire. If the goblins try to protect themselves from one team, the other two would be able to shoot them from the sides.
The first few waves of goblins carrying shields were mowed down from behind. The smart goblins on the other side clearly noticed something was wrong and had as many goblins as possible walk through the portal at the same time. Each group carried a shield and pointed it towards one of the team's locations.
The teams could only try to shoot through the holes. Otherwise, they'd have to just destroy the shields before killing the goblins behind it.
Eventually, after killing another hundred or so goblins, they stopped coming out of the portal. This was a good sign for the marines outside, but Mateo realized the grim situation they were actually in.
The goblins bodies and broken shields had piled up around the portal. They provided a natural defense for those now exiting the portal. The smart goblins still hadn't shown themselves, and the regular goblins had continued carrying out smarter and smarter countermeasures.
The only good thing was that the bodies of the goblins and their destroyed shields hindered the goblins movement. The goblins would have to clear the obstruction in order to properly attack the marines.
Another question Mateo had was where the goblins were able to get the shields from? If they didn't have a stockpile of them, which he believed they didn't since they appeared to specifically counter their rifles, how could the goblins make them so fast? Were there just that many goblins behind the portal or did they have something unknown that could make them?
"Look! Green flare coming from the comms station," one of the privates in Olivia's squad shouted.
Mateo turned to look. This was another flare fired at an angle towards them. It was a little farther than the relay team had been before. "They must have needed to move further away," he mused.
He took this flare to be a relayed signal. The new comms station had reconnected with Command.
That took one worry off of his shoulders. He still had no idea how to handle the unknown goblin menace. The unknown is truly what man feared most.
——
In the Command Center, Gabe anxiously waited for them to receive communications from Alpha team. They had been in the dark for over 40 minutes since the continuous event.
"Sir!" Private Jacob announced to Gabe. "We have finally reestablished comms with Alpha team."
"Ahh. Thank goodness. Why do we not have a camera feed then?"
"They were forced more than 7 miles away from the event center. Cameras are useless at this range."
"7 miles? That's way out of visual range. The flares won't work anymore."
"Dont worry, Commander. The report we received says that a logistics person and the marine corporal in charge of the comms station stayed behind to act as a relay."
"Emma stayed behind? Why would she do that?" Gabe couldn't care less about the marine.
"It seems she fought to stay behind. It was her idea to act as a relay in case the interference range was bigger than expected."
"Dammit Emma. You're too smart for your own good." Gabe almost whimpered to himself.
Jacob stayed silent hearing that. It wasn't his place to comfort the Commander.
"What's the situation then?" Gabe asked.
"The last flare the on-site teams sent was green. That was approximately 30 minutes ago."
"Have the comms station send a green flare. I need to know how the on-site teams are doing. Get John from Intelligence and Thomas from Agriculture on the line."
"Aye, sir. Flare's away. Waiting for a response. Thomas has declined the call, John has answered. Putting him on now."
"What can I do for you? Gotta say, your operation is getting interesting." John said when the call connected.
"I need you to send a preprogrammed drone like you did when you first filmed the events. We are barely maintaining a communication network. We can't event get visual feed of what's going on."
"Already on it. I'm going to be honest, I expected you to ask this 40 minutes ago when you lost visual. Hmm, easily flustered. I guess I'm going to need to update your…" John's voice trailed off at the end.
Gabe didn't like the feeling he got from John during that last sentence. It felt like John was analyzing his every action and reaction.
"Don't worry. The drone should be leaving the interference range within the next 5 minutes. I had it stay and record for a while since we didn't know how long the continuous event would last. I'll have the video sent to you immediately," John continued shortly.
"Thank you for doing that, Councilor Smith."
"Mhm," John grunted before ending the call.
Five minutes. Gabe only needed to wait five more minutes. His stomach felt like it was eating itself in anxious dread. What felt like five years but was in reality less than five minutes soon passed. The drone footage played on the main Holo table of the Pit.
Gasps could be heard around the Pit as everyone took in the scene of point Alpha. Those that had been making fun of Gabe earlier, realized that he was right. Something had happened.
The video started with an overhead view of the area. The black hole had already changed to its portal form. It was surrounded by a hundred green bleeding corpses and a few boars. The marines were hard at work modifying their vehicles and preparing for more action.
"Send images of those unknown corpses to R&D. See if they can identify them."
Gabe fast forwarded the footage of the marines as they prepared. Soon he got a call from Councilor Elenor Albright.
"Gabe, from what we can tell, those green corpses look exactly like goblins from our fantasy novels."
"Are you sure? There's no way our fantasy stories are now real," Gabe said hearing Elenor's analysis.
"R&D is in unanimous agreement. Those are goblins."
The room was quiet after that. No one knew what to say.
"The other creatures," Elenor began, "are likely abnormally large boars. However, we can see some indications of malnourishment among the boars. This indicates that the boars should be larger than they are now."
Even more bad news from Elenor. The boars already easily weighed 1000 lbs. If that was considered 'small,' then the boars could probably get up to 1500 lbs.
It was at this point that Gabe reached the fight with the shield carrying goblins. He was stunned that the goblins were able to come up with countermeasures so quickly.
The entire command room staff watched as another hundred shield wielding goblins were shot down by the teams on-site.
Elenor, still on call, watched as Gabe's face fell deep into astonishment at the scene.
"What's going on? Tell me! I need to know! This could…"
Gabe quickly cut her off.
"Sorry, but I need to go. I'll have the video sent to you. If you can figure anything out, let me know immediately," Gabe said and ended the call.
"Get me Kelly. Now," he said to Jacob after the call cut.
"Kid, can you stop…"
"No time for your antics, Kelly. Have the flares been delivered to the sub-base?"
"Yea. They got there a while ago. What's up?"
"Good," Gabe said then turned to Jacob.
"Get half those flares to the new comms station and relay point. Have the logistics personnel from the sub-base run them out." He then turned back to Kelly as Jacob moved to carry out his orders.
"Is the drone you used to deliver them still at the sub-base?"
"Yea. Look, kid. What's going on?"
"You'll find out later. As of right now, using military code 216.2 article 514, that drone is now under military control. Is that understood?"
"Gabe? What the hell is going on? How do you even know that law?"
"Is that understood?"
"You get scary when you get serious. You know that?" Gabe just stared at her, waiting for a yes. He wasn't dealing with her shit anymore.
"Fiiine. Yes, Gabe. I understand."
"Good. That drone will be preprogrammed to give each group of Alpha team a SITREP of the other team's conditions and objectives. They need to be updated on everything as soon as possible. The drone will then be used to give detailed orders to the soldiers at the 'portal' from now on. The flare system will remain in use for when there is not enough time for the drone to fly the distance," Gabe ordered both Kelly and Jacob.
"Kelly, get a shipment of grenades and other heavy ordinance sent to Alpha team as well as the others. Alpha team needs them on the double. "
If the goblins managed to make shields this quickly, then they'd likely be able to improve them just as quickly, too. If the shields got too strong, then only heavy weapons would be able to deal with them, and Alpha team only had a few.
Jacob immediately got to work on Gabe's orders while Kelly cocked her head. She picked up on Gabe's usage of the word portal instead of event. From that, she could infer many things, but the most important is that whatever it is that is going on, is far from their expectations.
"The drone lacks a microphone and speakers. The men on-site will need to connect with their Holos to get the reports," Kelly informed the Command Center staff.
"Keep the reports as concise as possible. We can't have them reading novels out there," Gabe followed up with, understanding what Kelly was getting at. Gabe nodded towards her before ending the call.
Within 30 seconds, reports were compiled and sent to the drone at sub-base KenMarco. The drone was given approximate coordinates and launched.
The drone, while empty could fly at speeds close to 200 mph. It would take approximately 2.5 minutes to reach Alpha point from the sub-base. That is if it wasn't stopping at the relay point. Overall, it would take about 5 minutes for it to reach Mateo's team.
The drone was a high priority delivery drone. It looked like old hobbyist quad-rotor drones, just several times the size. It was almost 6 ft wide and 8ft long. It used the latest solid-state batteries to have a range of 200 miles at top speed and cargo capacity. The drone was capable of carrying 200 pounds at 100 mph. Cargo was usually attached to the belly of the drone in special containers.
The Western Nation also had high capacity delivery drones which were double the size but could carry up to 1000 pounds of cargo at only 50 mph. These drones weren't used often as it would be more efficient to use a truck. These drones were only used when land based vehicles couldn't reach the target location.
The command center staff watched as the high priority delivery drone left sub-base KenMarco.
"Jacob!"
"Here, sir," Jacob responded to the summons.
"Have every military center on high alert. Get every single military person across the Western Nation on stand by. If every event turns into a portal, then we have a lot of work going forward. Get all members of the council on a call, the situation is dire."
Hearing Gabe's orders, all activity in the Pit stopped for a second. All of the officers hadn't thought about that. There were hundreds of confirmed events across the nation and if every one of them turned into portals... Almost simultaneously, chills shot down their backs. After only a few moments, all the officers resumed their work with an almost fanatic spirit.
Gabe stood at attention in front of the Holo table. Data feeds from the other three teams were intermittent as they crept closer to their continuous events.
"How long until the other three teams experience their continuous events?" Gabe asked Jacob.
"Beta has 2 hours. Gamma has 36 hours. Delta has 18 hours," Jacob listed efficiently.
"Have Beta begin preparing. Have the Beta comms station withdraw outside the future interference zone. Split them to also set up a relay point. Keep the three teams updated on what to expect. Let's assume their event will turn into a portal as well. Can we sortie another squad of marines to their location?"
"Yes, sir. There are available teams at Melted Ice Port which can head to their location."
"Send them out. Give them a full complement of weaponry." The sound of simulated clicks came from the officers' Holos as they sent orders.
Soon, the other 12 councilors were ready for the video conference. Even Thomas couldn't reject an official summons from Gabe. Especially since Councilor John seconded it.
Gabe stood at the head of the Pit's Holo table. He had his hands crossed behind his back. Wearing his Commander uniform, he looked imposing with an air of authority. The dark look of seriousness on his face gave the council a sense of foreboding.
The avatars of the 12 other members floated around the table, each waiting for him to speak. He then opened his mouth to address the council.