SS1 8.2 - Timed-Tear Gas

  Morning in the cave went swiftly. After we were done with private routine, we had breakfast. Then, we planned our next move. After spreading out map of Kubran Valley with fresh transparent lamination on the table, I turned my gaze to Ariel.

  “Where is our current position?”

  “Here.”

  Ariel pointed a spot in the map and I immediately put a mark on it. After that I measured the straight line to the edge of Kubran Valley and found out it was 9 km. Of course, we couldn’t take a straight exfil route.

  After a moment of ponder I turned my gaze to Ariel one more time. “Mark the best route to exit Kubran Valley.”

  Without a word Ariel put several marks on the map, and after connecting it I found the total distance we had to cover was about 18 km.

  Question mark instantly popped up in my forehead. “This is far longer than our infil route.”

  Ariel firmly nodded. “It’s because we have to make detour to avoid low-rank monster concentration.”

  “We also can only move in daytime,” Kara added. “Last night, at midnight we heard a series of warg’s howl.”

  ‘Warg huh?’ I muttered to myself.

  Based on information I had read, warg basically was the sabertooth version of wolf, with black coat and body size of stallion. They were being categorized as mid-rank monster. The reward for killing them was 15.000 mollar. It was 5000 mollar higher than the reward for killing Minotaur.

  Overall, Warg was weaker than Wyvern, but they hunt in pack of 4-6, and as a pack their body count was higher than any wyvern, including Old Jack. Most of all, other than remarkably sharp nose and ears, they had good night vision.

  “With the Warg enter the field, I agree that we can’t travel at night,” I calmly said. “But, after we killed Old Jack, traveling at daytime is not bad, right?”

  Kara instantly tilted her head while deeply looked at me. “How long since you become a hunter?”

  “I just started this profession this month,” I admitted.

  “I see,” Kara said before letting out a sigh.

  Then, Ariel explained our situation to me, “Berg, when a pack of warg hunt in an area, the entire low-rank monster in this area will hunt only at daylight, when the warg sleep.”

  I lightly nodded my head. “It means daylight travel won’t be as easy as I thought.”

  “Yeah,” Ariel calmly replied.

  “In case we stay in this cave, how long we have to wait until the commotion die down on its own?”

  “It will take a week before Kubran Valley return to its normal routine,” Ariel said. “However, it takes 2-3 days at max, before the warg discover this place.”

  “Damn,” I softly cursed. “So, we have to continue the exfil as fast as we can, and take the risk.”

  “Yeah.” Ariel then turned her gaze to the map on the table before weakly adding, “If only we have a way to blanket the route with tear gas. That will enable us to take shorter route. It will also increase our chance to escape significantly.”

  “Are you sure covering the route with tear gas will increase our chance significantly?” I asked while giving Ariel an expectant gaze.

  “Mhm, but it’s impossible to carry out such plan,” Ariel dejectedly said.

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  “Maybe it’s not that impossible,” I calmly said. “Mark the shortest route you have in mind, and let’s see if I can figure out something.”

  “Okay.”

  Ariel gave me a nod while Kara said nothing. After Ariel finished marking the shorter route, I immediately took out a pocket notebook and pencil before sitting in one corner of the cave and silently drew the exfil plan.

  ---

  The shortest exfil route Ariel could think of was about 11 km long through a huge patch of woodland. To make solid exfil plan, I had to know this woodland as much as I could. In my current circumstance, recon drone was the only intels gathering means I had in disposal.

  Fortunately, back then, I with my men and some folks from IDF Drone Force had built a very decent ISR drone for our platoon. We name it Orbiter 69 and it was very easy to build, operate, and maintain it.

  To house flight controls, avionics, networking and navigation system, gimballed high-res EO/IR ball, power pack and main drive train, we used 2.8 meter long and 45 cm thick tubular fuselage. It was modular and made of very light but durable composite material. Then, we integrated it with 2 pieces of 4 m long limbs to hold four rotors and four landing legs. In a glance, it looked like we put quad-rotors in Mini-Litening Pod.

  The performance was very decent. It had service ceiling of 5800 meter above sea level, 20 km of operational radius, and 4 hours of loitering endurance at 12 km/h with 9 kg payload. The EO/IR Ball was capable of target imagery, identification, tallying, and auto-tracking from its maximum service ceiling, both at day and at night. We also managed to enable it to fly very quietly. Now, I only had to reproduce it.

  And so, with a big smile in my face I assembled Orbiter 69. It cost me 380.000 mollar to build the first unit, not including the console to control it. It couldn’t be help. A decent electro-optic ball, high-output compact power pack, and proper networking and navigation system were expensive and I couldn’t salvage them from IDF Drone Force. I had to buy every component using my own money.

  However, I could use Orbiter 69 for future hunting if we managed to leave Kubran Valley. On the other hand, if I couldn’t leave Kubran Valley, I wouldn’t have a chance to spend the money I had accumulated. So, it was not such a bad deal. And while I did the assembling, Kara sat in front of me and gave me curious gaze all the time.

  “Do you know what this is?” I asked Kara while checking the connection between Orbiter 69 I just built and the console to control it.

  Kara immediately gave me a nod. “It’s quad-copter drone.”

  “It seems this is not the first time you see it.”

  “Some hunters who work with Silva Family uses it,” Kara casually said. “But this is the first time Kara see someone build it from scratch.”

  “I don’t build it from scratch actually,” I honestly explained. “I’m just putting together miltech-off-the-shelf components. I have also built it before, with my men and some drone nerds.”

  While looking at me straight in the eyes Kara asked me, “Before you come here, what is your job?”

  “I was a combat engineer officer.”

  “Have you been in combat?”

  “I have.”

  “Have you ever experienced near death experience?”

  “Several times.” After a pause I added, “The first two were by gunshot. The third was by a car crash in a joint exercise, a nutcase flew our car off a cliff. The fourth was by IED explosion.”

  “I see.” After a moment of silence Kara continued, “Let’s check it to see if your hand-made drone can fly and do its job.”

  “Yeah.”

  Wasting no time, I launched Orbiter 69 to its first ISR mission. I knew it would work as I expected, but it still felt so good when I confirmed it personally. Kara then replaced Ariel to become lookout in the cave entrance, while Ariel helped me make visual confirmation on our exfil route.

  Goblins, orcs, and even Minotaur filled the route to the brims. I used this chance to collect their imagery for future target identification. Then, I went straight to collect information on the exfil route. It took about 2 hours before I pulled back Orbiter 69 and landed it on nearby cliff, where Ariel had waited to retrieve it quietly. After that, we started the second phase in our exfil preparation.

  ---

  My exfil plan was simple. We would scatter timed-tear gas in our route. We would hang those tear gases in the trees using Orbiter 69, to form 11 km long and 100 meters wide tear gas corridor. And so, the second phase of our plan was to build the timed-tear gas and picked the spot to hang it.

  We used regular tear gas grenade for the plan. Kara would helped me to tie three piece of tear gases into one using duct tape and attached a big hook she made of 2 mm steel wire on it. I would then replace the safety pin and mechanical striker with electric-timed striker.

  Several defense contractors had built electric-timed striker for hand grenades or anti-personnel mind. I could use it and didn’t need to build it on my own. It would lighten my workload a lot.

  At the same time, while guarding the cave entrance Ariel studied the exfil route. She had to divide this route into several areas and predicted how fast we could arrive at each area. Her prediction was very vital as I would use it as a base for detonation time. Other than that, she also had to choose and mark the trees we would use to hang the tear gas.

  In calm manner, we carried out our workload. We stopped only for simple lunch and short break, and just before the sun set in the west we had completed the second phase. Now, we had one Orbiter 69, and several hundreds of timed-tear gas along with designated trees to hang it.

  After having evening bath and dinner we would go straight for third phase, placing the timed-tear gas on the exfil route.

  *****