The Soldier

by Terrance Mulloy

  “Armor-busters are hot!” he yelled.

  Hearing him, Mace gave a taut nod without taking his eyes off Marcus’s rig. “Remember, every fifth round is a tracer that will relay damage stats to your targeting HUD. Focus on the armored skirt underneath the barrel’s fume extractor. That’s where the driver’s vision port is located. It’s the only design flaw that damn thing has. Use long bursts only. Keep drilling until you make a hole.”

  Lord Gunny pressed his faceplate closer to the turret’s huge telescopic sight and made some manual adjustments to the azimuth and elevation gimbals attached to the base of the huge weapon. When his targeting apparatus had a lock on the object ahead of them, a red icon flashed across his HUD. “And we are locked, cocked, and ready to rock.”

  “Copy that, Gunny. Marcus, I want you to maintain course but drop back a little. I’m gonna come up on your right side and overtake you. We’ll act as a shield and a battering ram against that Stalker.”

  “OK, easing off the gas now,” Marcus replied. Engines rumbled and coughed as he downshifted and dropped his speed, veering slightly to the left as Mace’s TAV roared up along his right side to overtake him.

  Mace’s eyes refocused on the Stalker ahead as he positioned himself in front of Marcus.

  The imposing, arachnoid-shaped vehicle had stopped moving and was now stationary, perched across their path like a Black Widow waiting for her prey to draw closer.

  Mace could also see the Stalker’s massive armaments spinning up, readying itself to unleash hell on what remained of the approaching convoy. “Gunny, light her up!”

  Lord Gunny squeezed his triggers and opened fire. There was a rib-shuddering thump as a column of intense flame erupted from the turret like a blowtorch.

  Geysers of brittle sulfur spewed into the air as the armor-busting rounds chewed up the ground before finding their mark on the driver’s vision port, sparks showering off the reinforced hull like the Fourth of July as Lord Gunny began to drill into the war machine. Oddly, the Stalker still did not react.

  Matt could feel the turret’s recoil through the entire vehicle. The octangular flooring plinths underneath him were vibrating up through the soles of his combat boots, massaging his calf muscles as the TAV continued to plow forward. The anticipation of engaging the enemy on foot was almost unbearable for him now.

  He could see that same anticipation etched into the faces of WarBarbie and Tractor. They had all been couped up inside this rattling tin can for hours. And now, with six of their squadmates dead, they would give anything to simply get out and fight in the open air.

  They were about to get that opportunity.

  As Mace kept up his speed, drawing closer and closer to the enemy blockade, he wondered why the Stalker had not yet returned fire on them. While Lord Gunny continued to pound it, the machine appeared to be waiting for something. If Mace did not know any better, it would be easy to assume the vehicle had suddenly been abandoned. Instinctively, he flicked his eyes to the rearview camera on his dashboard to check on Marcus.

  What he saw caused him to gasp.

  The rig was now fishtailing wildly, headed towards a steep rockface that protruded up from a naturally formed ditch. As the driver’s cab swerved back across Mace’s field of view, he glimpsed an impact hole in the windshield, instantly recognizing it as a large-bore round that was possibly of human origin – most likely a USC sniper’s rifle that had been scavenged from the field somewhere. It had penetrated the reinforced glass and struck Marcus in the neck before exiting the cab. Mace could also see dark viscera gushing as Marcus’s body slumped over the wheel. He was already dead by the time the enormous vehicle slid sideways into the ditch with the force of a wrecking ball. There was a massive boom as tons of steel and metal collided with the ancient rockface. However, the impact was not enough to roll the vehicle or destroy it completely. Despite the battered driver’s cab, the rig remained upright, its engines still running.

  The dull boom from the rig’s impact behind them was loud enough to cause Matt and the two Praetorians next to him to spin around.

  Through the rear viewport, they could see the rig’s long trailer skewed awkwardly across their path, the driver’s cab bashed up against the towering rockface.

  As they helplessly watched the vehicle get smaller and smaller, Tractor wheeled back to Mace and stormed up behind him. “Cap, to hell with this!” he yelled over the concussive clap of Lord Gunny’s turret. “Stop the vehicle! We need to get out and secure that rig!”

  Mace shook his head, keeping his eyes on the Stalker ahead. “Tractor, there’s a sniper out there – who we can’t deal with it until we neutralize that Stalker first. The second we stop moving, we’re all dead. So is everyone waiting for us at Camp Suffield.”

  Before Tractor even had a chance to protest that, another round penetrated the TAV’s windshield, clipping Mace’s right shoulder with such force, the armored plating on his shoulder exploded, peppering his faceplate with chips of polyethylene composites.

  The round exited Mace’s shoulder and continued into Tractor’s lower left leg, shattering his fibula like a stick of chalk.

  As Mace bucked like a spooked horse from the bullet’s impact before slumping over, his slackened grip on the steering levers wrenched sideways, causing the speeding TAV to violently swerve left.

  Epsilon’s dense gravity quickly won the fight, and the large vehicle keeled over like a dying animal, axels groaning before flipping completely onto its side. All five occupants were immediately thrown in all directions as the TAV began to tumble like a runaway boulder. As the vehicle rolled, the armored shell that protected Lord Gunny’s turret folded under its own weight, entombing him under a crush of reinforced metal that weighed tons.

  Matt’s POV was a bone-jarring mess as he bounced against the interior, colliding against Tractor and WarBarbie’s limp bodies until consciousness mercifully left him.

  Twenty-Two

  When Matt came to, the first thing he heard apart from a warning alarm bleating somewhere overhead, and his ringing ears, was a soft groan. WarBarbie was somewhere nearby, and she was audibly in pain.

  As he slowly opened his eyes, they traveled around the battered interior, struggling to find focus in the blinking red cabin light.

  Straps and harnesses hung like limp tentacles, and the floor was a sea of upturned boxes and gear, giving the appearance the vehicle had been ransacked by bandits. It was then Matt realized everything was lopsided. He was also pinned behind a large surplus crate that had slammed into him after being torn free from its restraints.

  Matt calmed his breathing while he attempted to assess himself. There was some dulled pain around the chest area, however, no limbs felt broken when he tried to move them.

  As his eyes adjusted more, he spotted WarBarbie further along the aisle, banged up and minus her helmet. Her body was skewed at an awkward angle, and her nose appeared to be bleeding, but otherwise, she seemed OK. Lifting her head, she spotted her helmet wedged between two crates. She reached over and picked it up, before placing it back over her head, she spat a wad of blood on the floor, cursing the situation she found herself in. “Fuckin’ Dupes…”

  Matt’s eyes then narrowed with concern as he peered beyond WarBarbie to the gunnery turret at the rear of the TAV.

  The turret basket had been flattened and warped from taking the full brunt of the vehicle’s weight when rolling upside-down. There’s simply no way Lord Gunny could have survived. With their huge tire treads, TAVs were not designed to flip easily, but the speed at which they were traveling when Mace yanked the steering levers, produced enough momentum to invert all four wheels, causing them to lose traction and lift the vehicle. Despite the protective chassis surrounding the troop cab, it was a miracle anyone had survived such a violent impact.

  Lord Gunny’s demise was immediately confirmed with grim finality when WarBarbie painfully rolled herself over and peered inside, calling out for him. “Gunny… get your ass in here… Gunny?” />
  There was no response.

  She turned to Matt. Neither said anything. But the venom coiled inside her eyes revealed everything she was feeling. Matt could also see she was holding back tears now.

  Across from them, Tractor was still coming to, also minus his helmet. He was groaning softly from the excruciating pain of his shattered leg. It was bent from the knee down at an unnatural angle. His foot also appeared to be completely missing, and aside from the blood pooling underneath him, Matt thought he could see bone protruding through his cracked leg armor. Tractor desperately needed a tourniquet and a splint, otherwise, he was going to bleed out before they even managed to exit the vehicle.

  Mace was wedged in below his driver’s seat, frantically trying to work the radio comms on the console above him, a steady stream of blood running down his limp arm. From what Matt could see, his exposed right shoulder was nothing but mashed bone. “Brightstar, Brightstar… this is Doom Rider 1-9…” he wearily croaked. “Fast Eagle is compromised… all elements are down in the wild… I repeat, all elements are down in the wild... how copy?” When Mace received silence from the TAV’s primary comms unit, he grunted with frustration and punched the dead console with his good arm. It was a reflex action that caused him to yelp with pain. Whatever was left of his right shoulder was in bad shape. Twisting his head around, he spotted Matt sluggishly trying to pull himself free of the supply crate. “Greenie… you OK?”

  “Sir… gimmie one moment—” Matt grunted as he wiggled out from underneath the large crate. His chest armor was bashed and scuffed, indicating it was the one thing that had stopped the crate from flattening his entire upper torso into a pancake.

  With each passing minute, Mace could feel himself weakening from blood loss. He also could not feel or move his right arm. It was useless. They needed to get moving and find refuge. “Greenie, you’re gonna have to drag my ass out of this vehicle. I can’t move.”

  Matt rolled onto his belly and began to slither towards Mace, keeping his head down. “I’m coming to you now.”

  Mace craned his neck over Matt to check on WarBarbie at the back of the vehicle. “WarBarbie, you good?”

  Still slightly dazed, she was checking herself over for anything broken. Without looking up, she gave Mace a groggy nod. She then turned to Tractor and grimaced. “Tractor’s leg is looking pretty gnarly, cap. We’re gonna need to tourniquet and shrink-seal it.”

  “There’s no time for that.” Mace swiveled back to peer out the lopsided windshield that had partially frosted from spiderwebbing. He breathed a sigh of relief to see the Stalker had not moved from its position.

  It still sat there in silence, hunched over their path like a giant spider. It looked abandoned, even though Mace knew it wasn’t. He figured if that Stalker had been stolen or resurrected from the field, there was a good chance its weapon systems were not operating at full capacity. It was also possibly running low on its fuel source. Either way, it made sense not to waste precious firepower on a single TAV that had already been incapacitated. Knowing how territorial Dupes were, he was starting to think the Stalker was merely positioned there to intimidate any would-be trespassers. Either way, he was not willing to test that theory. They had to get moving.

  As he went to turn back to Matt, he noticed several indistinct figures in the distance. Tall and gaunt, they moved stealthily like nocturnal predators, cautiously advancing on the upturned vehicle like it was some type of downed prey.

  For the most part, Dupes were leaderless and unorganized combatants. At first, the USC saw them as a nuisance more than anything. But they guarded what little territory they occupied fiercely, and in recent years, their attacks on major assets had become more sophisticated and deadly. Mace knew these Dupes would not hesitate to kill them in order to acquire their weapons and supplies. Furthermore, there was also a chance any nearby Wraith outposts would be alerted to this activity and move in to investigate. Either scenario was bad.

  “Greenie!” Mace barked. “See that emergency clamp behind you?”

  Matt twisted to the beveled clamp on the wall beside him. “Yeah, I see it.”

  “Pull it. And be sure to put some weight behind it.”

  Matt crawled closer and got to his knees. Using both hands, he pushed the clamp up until he heard a dull clunk. The hatch then popped open, Epsilon’s humid night air immediately flooding the vehicle, filling everyone’s nostrils with an acrid mix of leaking fuel and sulfur.

  “Christ, hotter than balls out there,” WarBarbie said as she kicked away some crates to clear a path. She then grabbed Tractor by the arms and started dragging him towards the hatch by his arms, leaving a smeared blood trail in their wake.

  Wincing with pain, Mace reached over with his good arm and awkwardly unholstered his sidearm. Still cradling his arm by the elbow, he then started moving towards Matt. “WarBarbie, front-and-center. We’ve got several contacts advancing on us. I need you to deal with them. Buy us some time so Reeves can help us bail this piece of shit.”

  Letting go of Tractor’s arms, WarBarbie wheeled to Matt, her eyes now piercing him like daggers. “You need to get the captain and Tractor clear of this wreckage. Think you can do that without fucking up?”

  Matt gave her a taut nod. “I can. Just keep that sniper off our back.”

  “Can’t do that if I don’t know where he is. But first…” WarBarbie quickly checked her rifle then moved over to the hatch, leading with the barrel to slowly peer outside the upturned vehicle. “Come to momma,” she whispered as her night-vision sights searched for the advancing Dupes.

  “Keep it dark. Don’t let them get the drop on you first,” Mace cautioned as Matt helped him navigate around some fallen crates that had blocked their path. “Greenie, leave me. Go get Tractor.” Spotting an upturned medical kit, Mace put his weapon down and began clawing at it.

  Matt waddled over to Tractor, who was now unconscious. Upon closer inspection, his right leg had been obliterated. Matt wondered how the poor guy was ever going to survive this. Even if they did manage to stabilize his wound, the amount of blood he had already lost was more than significant. “Sir, he’s gonna bleed out if we don’t wrap that leg.”

  “Get him over here then.”

  Matt took both arms and began dragging Tractor towards Mace.

  “What do you see out there?” Mace opened the medical kit to fish out two field tourniquet devices. “You got a visual, WarBarbie? Confirm.”

  “Negative. Give me a sec, cap.” WarBarbie’s rifle slowly swept the rocky ridgeline above in search of the elusive sniper before landing back on the five advancing Dupes. Whenever she sighted enemies through her rifle scope, it always felt like time around her had lapsed, yet the world inside her scope had somehow sped up. When her crosshairs landed center-mass on the small group, she could feel the hairs on her neck stiffen. “Confirmed. Targets at our one o’clock,” she whispered, her breath quickening. “I count five incoming, seventy-yards out.”

  “What about that Stalker? Is it moving yet?”

  She focused her gaze on the unmoving machine that loomed behind them. “Negative. No sign of activity... just a hunch, but I don’t think they know how to fully operate that thing yet.”

  “Yeah, well, even if that’s true, I don’t want to sit around and wait for them to figure it out. You are clear to engage.” Mace was kneeling behind her now, helping Matt as best he could with Tractor.

  They had managed to tourniquet his leg and staunch the bleeding from the ankle stump with a field device that contained a reinforced windlass. The stabilization plate they used instantly molded to the shape of Tractor’s lower leg. Then, Matt quickly wrapped Mace’s shoulder in a smaller, yet similar device that applied circumferential pressure to his wound.

  Under the hues of night-vision, the Dupes features looked even more bizarre as they continued to advance, their rifles aimed at the TAV. Although alien in origin, they were extraordinary pieces of genetic engineering that had gone drastically wrong. Des
igned to look entirely human for the purposes of military infiltration, their ragged limbs and torsos were now a mixture of exposed wiring, patchy hair, and rotting, inorganic compounds, making them appear even more ghoulish and otherworldly. They were nothing but reanimated corpses, exiled to live out the rest of their days scavenging and looting whatever resources they could find.

  Now prone outside the hatch, WarBarbie’s crosshairs gently drifted over the young female of the group. Through her tattered fatigues, a slender figure could be discerned, along with a vacant yet placid face that might have been strikingly beautiful once. A true Infiltrator, almost indistinguishable from a real human if not for the scars of time. WarBarbie figured she was probably designed to mimic the appearance of some high-ranking USC officer’s daughter. Perhaps she became wounded during a covert operation, which saw her Wraith superiors banish her to the badlands. There was no tolerance for failure in the Wraith chain of command.

  As WarBarbie pulled her trigger, unleashing a volley of plasma into the female Dupe’s chest, she figured she was doing it a favor, sparing the poor being from an aimless life of misery.

  The other four male Dupes immediately returned fire, peppering the exposed underbelly of upturned TAV. But WarBarbie was already flaying them before they could even find their target. As she fired in surgical bursts, all four went down in a black mist, almost dropping in unison.

  “Targets KIA.” She then scrambled to her feet, shouldered her rifle, and edged back through the hatch to assist with Tractor.

  “Here, take his other arm for me…” instructed Mace, grimacing from the pain of his own arm as he backed away, allowing her to take his place and grab Tractor’s left arm. “I can’t lift him. My shoulder is FUBAR.”