Chapter 251: Junction FOB

Farther down the corridor, the road opened into a broad five-way intercity junction.

The five roads widened into multiple turning lanes around old traffic islands. Fuel stops, warehouses and roadside businesses occupied much of the ground around the junction.

Most were abandoned now.

Cars had been left across several turning lanes while part of a roadside structure had collapsed into the southern approach. A delivery truck sat diagonally across another lane with its rear axle buried under broken concrete.

The surviving road signs made the junction more useful than the mess suggested.

North led back toward Grefort.

The main corridor continued south toward Silverpeak.

Horjus branched east, close enough to the main route that the city could be reached without forcing Silverpeak traffic through it.

Another road turned southwest toward Skinshank, with Hawford listed farther along the same wider route.

The last road turned northwest. Someone had painted a thick red X across the destination name on its largest sign.

Brandon looked at it for a moment.

"That’s mildly reassuring."

He returned his attention to the blocked lanes.

"DASFs, secure the approaches. Engineers forward."

The DASFs moved out toward the five roads while the Combat Engineering Vehicle came up from the support column.

It was the first time Brandon had seen the CEV used for the kind of route-clearing work it was built for.

The CEV lowered its broad blade before entering the intersection.

The first abandoned cars barely slowed its advance.

Two sedans scraped sideways across the pavement as the vehicle pushed through them, followed by a small van that rolled against the curb before the blade carried it the rest of the way off the usable lane.

The delivery truck took more work.

Its rear end had settled into a collapsed section beside the road, leaving the chassis wedged against broken concrete. The CEV stopped beside it and raised the articulated arm mounted across its engineering section.

The heavy grab closed around part of the truck’s frame.

The truck’s frame groaned as the CEV lifted it enough to pull the buried rear free, then dragged it toward the shoulder. Several chunks of concrete came with it, exposing the damaged pavement underneath.

Engineers followed behind.

They checked the newly exposed pavement before allowing anything heavier through, marked the damaged sections that could still support normal traffic and redirected the column around one area where the road had begun sinking.

The CEV continued into the southern lanes.

The blade pushed a broken concrete barrier off the usable lane. The articulated arm cleared what remained of a collapsed sign support afterward, placing the heavier pieces well away from the road instead of leaving the Engineers to cut them apart by hand.

Within several minutes, two lanes through the junction were open again.

Brandon watched the work from the BACV.

The BACV deployed farther north still covered the road behind them. Its Radar overlapped with Brandon’s moving vehicle, keeping the System tactical picture continuous along the corridor.

More BACVs were moving with the deeper support elements. The plan was to keep pushing them forward in stages. A new vehicle would deploy before the lead BACV moved beyond the previous coverage area, then remain under guard while the advance continued south.

The long-range command radios were separate from that Radar chain. Losing the overlap would break the shared System picture, not cut Brandon off from Main Base.

The junction was the next obvious place for a deployed node.

Five roads met here, and reopening the route toward Grefort would only make the junction more important.

Leaving a deployed BACV beside the road without a guarded position made little sense either.

Brandon looked across the cleared ground beside the intersection.

"Set up a temporary FOB beside the junction. Keep the intersection open."

"Understood."

"Leave one Guardian APC with the security element. Engineers, mark the perimeter and keep the civilian lanes open unless there’s a reason to close them."

The orders went out.

A cleared section beside the junction gave them enough space without occupying the road itself. Engineers began marking the perimeter while the first security section moved into position around the approaches.

Brandon wasn’t building another permanent base. He only needed a guarded Radar position, protected vehicle space and enough Engineers to keep the roads open.

Brandon looked toward the forward BACV.

"Bring the next BACV up and deploy it here. Mine stays with the advance."

"Copy."

The command vehicle pulled into the cleared position.

Its sensor assembly shifted into the full deployed configuration while the crew brought the larger Radar package online. The process took roughly a minute and a half.

Then the picture widened. The BACV’s fifteen-kilometer moving envelope expanded toward its full fifty-kilometer deployed radius.

The BACV’s results was still much rougher than a Physical Radar Facility, but the larger movements and concentrations stood out clearly.

Horjus filled the eastern side of the display. The city was close enough that much of it already sat inside the deployed Radar coverage.

Brandon placed the earlier Raptor imagery beside the new picture.

Several gray concentrations matched the inhabited northern and western sections. Trucks and motorcycles moved along a few of the roads between them.

The eastern and southern sides were worse.

Large red concentrations filled several built-up areas, while a few blocks showed red and gray contacts close together.

Horjus still had survivors, but nobody had cleared the whole city.

Brandon enlarged the eastern and southern sectors.

The mixed blocks were immediately off the table for heavy fire. The isolated red concentrations were different.

Horjus was not blocking the road to Silverpeak, so Brandon had no reason to pull the entire battle group east. But he wasn’t leaving concentrations that large beside the supply corridor without doing anything about them.

Heavy bombardment could also push surviving infected out of the impact areas. Someone needed to be waiting when that happened.

Brandon marked the largest isolated red sectors.

The Hellhammers could work on the smaller concentrations once the firing areas were checked. The MLRS could hit the larger masses from farther back.

None of them would fire into the mixed sectors.

"Mark every mixed sector as no-fire. Send the isolated red concentrations to Fires and Air for confirmation. Restrict launches until we have a formation ready to contain any movement outward."

A Radio Operator acknowledged.

Brandon then opened the long-range command channel.

"Southern command to Main Base."

The reply came through the Radar chain shortly afterward.

"Main Base receiving."

"Forward junction secured. Horjus is inside our deployed Radar coverage."

Brandon sent the current picture and the marked no-fire sectors with the report.

"Survivor concentrations are active in the north and west. Large infected concentrations remain east and south, with several mixed areas between them."

He switched to the marked red sectors.

"Request one follow-on formation for Horjus and a limited fires package. Hellhammers for the closer concentrations, MLRS for the larger isolated groups. Air can confirm movement before release."

A brief pause followed.

"Mixed sectors remain off-limits from fire mission."

"Report received, Southern Command. Send the target package. Follow-on and fires assignments are being reviewed."