Chapter 48: The Surgical Ambush
The air in the P.A.C.I.F.I.C. Mobile Command Unit (MCU) was a constant sixty-eight degrees. It tasted of absolutely nothing. Clean. Dead.
Commander Kaelen leaned back in his mesh chair, his fingers tracing a rhythmic pattern on the cool hilt of his sidearm. On the wall-sized monitor, a high-altitude scrying drone projected a blue wireframe of the 101 Highway ruins. Thermal filters painted the landscape in shades of cold cobalt, save for a few orange heat signatures moving along a collapsed girder.
"Status on the stragglers," Kaelen said. His voice was flat, barely audible over the hum of the cooling fans.
"Target Group Seven-Bravo is stalled in the Sepulveda funnel, sir," a technician replied. "The Eraser drone is maintaining a lock. We're waiting for the rain density to drop before recovery. Atmospheric acidity is at twelve percent. We don't want to degrade the asset's biological integrity before processing."
