[b]EOA - THE MAINLAND KINGDOM - SANDY SHORES[/b]

Rockwell ducked down, slipping his shrouded head under another pine branch with practiced ease, and continued forwards, foot by foot, inch by inch. It was slow going, out of necessity, for him and his squad. Above all else they had to evade detection. This was a sensitive job, one that came all the way down to them from the top, from the Sons of Liberty themselves. He and his men, all proud soldiers of the eastern Cascadian People's Army chapter, had been diverted from their Judgement Day assignments in order to investigate a isolated town that was playing host to very advanced aircraft. It was curious, and it was also ominous, given current events. And that was why they were packing enough ammunition and provisions to lay siege to the little town, in addition to a few MANPADS. Old Imperial air defense missile tubes, United States ones. Whatever they could acquire. It was a mish-mash, but it was all effective. The Cascadian bogeymen were never very well supplied given their geographic isolation, but they had a knack for making do.

They had ditched their IFVs around one kilometer back and had proceeded on foot through the woods, in the interest of avoiding detection, which was, for sure, one thing that they were very good at. They were some of the Empire's most dedicated adversaries in the north-west, and had run a reign of terror in urban outskirts with the use of IEDs and brigades of sniper teams, and through it all they had never been caught. They were known only by the report of their rifles, the flipped, burning husks of Imperial government vehicles on rural stretches of highway, and the manifesto they had published online through cooperation with the Sons of Liberty Signal Corps that espoused a doctrine of decisive action against Washingtonian tyranny. It was a fine reputation they'd cultivated. One of both fear and awe. Merciless to the Empire's servants and aloof to and unseen by the common man. Rockwell embraced it. It made him giddy, but it wasn't like him to show as much. He was reserved, cool, on the field and off. The fashion in which they lived off the land, largely in high wilderness, blurred the lines between active duty and rest, however.

"Three hundred meters out from the edge of the woods," one of his subordinates buzzed in his ear. Alex, his favored pathfinder, his adopted daughter. She had a knack for weaving her way through these woods. A shame they wouldn't have the luxury of their cover all the way up to the town itself, it was where they thrived, in their ghillie suits and forest camouflage, moving with careful, killer instinct.

"Keep the spread," he replied, "And remember, we're here for information. Keep your fingers off your triggers until I say otherwise. Best case scenario is we figure out what's going on here and no one's the wiser."

His orders were met with silence, but he knew they had heard him. A few in his peripheral vision had stiffened up, redoubled their focus on the methodical advance. They hadn't run into any traps yet. No ambushes. No landmines. That was reassuring, but if they weren't focused, their next steps could be their last. To that end they had all made it habit, muscle memory, to listen and look with every step. They were at their most vulnerable while moving, but they had, over the years, adopted what they knew from their past lives, from their work in the police, from their hunting, to minimize the risks.

They slowed and hunched, all fifteen of them, as they approached the edge of the treeline, as the field beyond, and the town perhaps half a kilometer out came into sight. The closer they got, the more they slowed, and a few took to the dirt and undergrowth to crawl ahead, making the most of the heat-masking camo netting they wore. Some stopped, some dared to continue the approach to the absolute safe limit.

"Huh. Someone went and prettied the place up. Old resort or some shit. Not even a town," Alex murmured.

A few muttered agreements echoed back and forth across the line.

The whole squad was prone by this point. Some had set up their rifles at their sides, others had taken to impromptu surveillance with binoculars and thermal imaging devices. The wind made the branches and leaves above their heads shimmy and dance, and rustle suitably. Otherwise, it was dead silent.

They didn't have the best angle, but a few reports of heat signatures came through to him from the others. The place was inhabited, and had been made to almost resemble a fort with local materials.

"No aircraft from this angle," one of the soldiers huffed, "Not as far as I can tell. Could have bugged off."

Rockwell pressed his lips together concernedly and reached up to his ear to flip through radio channels. It was virtually confirmed that there was no aircraft, but there were definitely people lurking around. He needed to at least confirm with his counterpart that they didn't have eyes on the craft, though. Better safe than sorry.

Blue team, the other fifteen who had gone out to the coast with them via IFV, had circled around to the north end to present a second front, and also to gain a different perspective on the settlement. He hadn't heard anything from them yet, which was, for all intents and purposes, a confirmation that they had eluded notice as well, and that no one had kicked a tripwire on the way up.

He growled into the radio, speaking low still, depsite the distance to the makeshift fort, "Dupont. What have you got?"

Rockwell scowled reflexively as he got static, and a subsequent heavy breath as a reply. Dupont needed to back off of the mic, Rockwell thought, with extreme displeasure. "A few contacts. No aircraft. Do our surveillance orders stand?"

"They do, but be prepared to engage," Rockwell answered. He hesitated, and then he added, "I'm going to send up three of my guys in a little bit. Putting a drone in the sky first."

"I hear you. Keep cool."

"Yeah."

Rockwell flipped back to his squad's channel and then rolled leftways and craned his neck to get a look at his drone operator. A young, redheaded kid. As cool and collected as anyone else while on the field, but a bit of a clutz when out of his camo. He knew the kid, James, just as well as he knew anyone else on his squad. They were family, after all. They lived together as a community, and fought together too. And he had handpicked them. James had potential, and a knack for clever UAV maneuvering. He was good to have around.

Commander Rockwell raised a hand to James, and then pointed upwards, signalling for the kid to put the thing together and get it airborne. In a matter of minutes he'd unpacked the drone, assembled it, and had it softly buzzing its way up out of the canopy and into the sky. It coasted west, out towards the settlement, and into a perfect holding position. James' military-grade tablet provided him a bird's eye view of the compound, and targets began cropping up, outlined in an orange-red by the drone's software. More buildings, not directly within the purview of the primary compound, became apparent. One among which was a school. A school with running heaters, as the drone's infrared ascertained.

"Rockwell, I got parachutes out here west of the city. The craft left some folks behind it looks like, but they can't be the same ones we're seeing now. Heaters and stuff, you know? ... Infrastructure? I mean the place looks lived in."

"Yeah, I got it James," Rockwell said, and he crawled over, calmly and carefully, to get a look at the drone camera feed. He pointed at the school and said, "Get closer."

The drone buzzed lower and lower, with James trying to get an angle at the derelict school's windows. He flipped back and forth between direct feed and IR.

"Get me eyes on whoever's in there. Whoever these guys are, they're colluding with someone from over the borders. A whole platoon of paratroopers don't just disappear."