by Sonya Noble
“Arena, tomorrow, five,” Pariah said.
“I’ll be there,” Garn agreed. “Be ready for history to repeat itself.”
“Puh-lease. I’ve been throwing guys bigger than you through walls for ten years,” Pariah said.
“I’m so scared. See you then.”
Garn eventually left after doing a thousand push-ups and Pariah finally put the big stick down. She stretched her legs for a few more minutes, helped a few of the new boys with their fighting techniques, and finally hit the showers.
Chapter 8: Oath
The next day, Pariah met Garn in the arena at 1700 hours sharp. The duel/fist-fight went on for two hours, with neither gaining an advantage. Pariah would kick, Garn would block, Garn would punch, Pariah would dodge. It was like a dance, long, intricate, long, and sometimes graceful.
Garn decided to change things up a bit. When Pariah punched, he grabbed both her fists and pushed her to the other side of the arena and up against the wall.
“Had enough?” he asked, grunting.
“I’m just getting warmed up,” Pariah said, kicking him away.
“So, you’ve been holding out on me, huh?” Garn said, clutching his side and panting.
“Wouldn’t want to hurt you,” Pariah responded, raising an eyebrow and raising her fists in a defensive position.
“Or the wall,” Garn said with a short laugh. “I have a slight confession to make: I’ve been holding out as well!”
Pariah barely blocked his kicks and punches, and dodged. She was loosing ground.
Assuming a cat stance, she pounced on Garn, knocking him to the ground and pinning him beneath her. He struggled to push her off, but to no avail, she had a grip like titanium steel. He had to concede.
“Nice job,” Garn said as Pariah helped him up. “You’re pretty strong.”
“Aw, is that a compliment?” Pariah replied, wiping her brow and chugging some water. Her clothes were drenched in sweat and she looked exhausted. And satisfied.
I’m hitting the showers,” Garn said, slinging a bag over his shoulder.
“Good, you stink!” Pariah said, waving a hand in front of her nose.
“You sure it’s not you?” Garn asked. “You don’t quite smell like flowers either.”
“It’s my girl smell,” Pariah joked.
Garn laughed. “Catch you later, Pariah.”
***
“So, I just realized something,” Hope said as they sat down in the cafeteria for dinner.
“What?” Pariah asked, now all showered and dressed in the closest thing to normal clothes, a knee-length jean-skirt and a gray T-shirt.
“We all took an oath when we joined Zeta Squad,” Hope explained.
“Oh yeah, the ’Z-oath’,” Hawk said, picking at her food.
“Hey guys, uh, girls,” Garn said, sitting down next to them.
“Oh, guess what?” Pariah said, excitedly.
“You finally figured out the fungus-thingies weaknesses and we can defeat them in less than a week with this new knowledge?” Shiloh took a deep breath.
Everyone turned to stare at her. Shiloh barely ever said more than two or three words at a time, so this sudden outburst was quite surprising.
“What? She said guess,” Shiloh said, shrugging and going back to eating her food.
“Okay, so anyways, I destroyed Garn today!” Pariah exclaimed.
“I wouldn’t say destroyed, just taken off-guard,” Garn corrected.
“Psh, whatever!” Pariah rolled her eyes and laughed.
***
“We stand together,” Hope said.
“We fight together,” Peace said.
“We dream together,” Dreamer said.
“We laugh together,” Shiloh said.
“We cry together,” Angel said.
“We die together,” Anaconda said.
“We are together,” Tigress said.
“No man left behind,” Hawk said.
“Together we are strong,” Pariah said, ending the mantra.
“We took this oath, and we stand by it no matter what.”
“Even if it costs us the mission,” Anaconda whispered, touching one of the scars on her face.
“Zeta Squad, report to the briefing room immediately,” Tison said over the intercom that ran through the whole base. Everyone jumped up and filed out.
Chapter 9: No Man Left Behind
“What’s the problem?” Hope asked, asking the question that was on everyone’s mind as they entered the room. It had four rows of seats, enough to seat about twenty people, and a screen in the front of the room that the General, Captain McKillan, and Lieutenant Tison were standing by.
“There was a distress beacon picked up today that was sent yesterday at approximately 0937,” Whitaker said, switching on the screen.
"Another distress signal, eh?" Pariah muttered under her breath.
“It originated around here,” Tison said, using his finger to trace a circle around the holographic globe that was turning slowly. The girls gathered around it and studied the schematics.
“That’s South America,” Dreamer said, looking quizzically at the globe.
“Correct, trooper,” Whitaker affirmed. “We sent some Marines there a few weeks back to wipe out a small collection of the fungus, but they failed to check in last week.”
“And you want us to investigate,” Tigress guessed.
“Exactly,” Whitaker nodded his head.
“Will the Captain and the Lieutenant be joining us?” Anaconda inquired.
“Wouldn’t miss it,” Garn said, finally speaking.
“Be ready to go at 0600 tomorrow morning, Zeta Squad.”
***
“Don’t you just love being crammed into an already-cramped Stratus with all your buddies...and Tison?” Tigress asked, smiling grimly.
“Yeah!” Pariah said with mock-enthusiasm. “And I thought Shiloh could snore!”
“Dude, the L.T. snores loud enough to wake the dead!” Anaconda added, trying to hold back laughter.
“Come on, I’m not that bad!” Tison protested.
“Just loud enough to drown out Pariah’s ear-splittingly loud music,” Shiloh pointed out.
“There’s the understatement of the century!” Dreamer laughed.
“Drop off in T-minus fifteen minutes,” Hope said, after checking with the pilot.
Usually one of the clones piloted a Stratus while their 'back-up pilot,' as they called him or her, got some much needed sleep, but this time was different.
Everyone slapped on their helmets and checked their equipment while the pilot maneuvered around to the rendezvous point.
Their mission: back up some Marines and wipe out the ever-evolving fungus as fast as possible.
“Let’s lock ’n load!” Hope said as they jumped out of the Stratus plane and started firing at the fungus mutations.
***
“We have a small problem!” Angel yelled, taking cover behind a wall.
“Since when do these things fire weapons?” Peace cried.
“Maybe they’re like the Flood, from Halo,” Garn yelled, gunning down another fungus.
Halo had lasted centuries after they'd created the final game, and people were constantly adjusting it so that it was compatible for their various game systems or virtual reality simulators.
“They eat us and gain all our knowledge?!” Pariah screamed over the comm.
“If your report of the woman and a fungus, then they more accurately absorb people, and then gain their knowledge,” Tison said, shooting down another hulking green-purple fungus.
“They’re a lot easier to kill, though!” Tigress said, reloading.
“Until they just absorb each other and get bigger,” Dreamer muttered grimly.
“Let’s blow these guys to Venus!” Pariah yelled, pulling out her rocket launcher and blowing a hole through a very large and slithering fungus. The fragments were absorbed by another fungus, but she quickly shot it down with a q
uick burst from her assault rifle.
“Throw me the flamethrower!” Peace yelled, switching weapons. She fired the huge gun and incinerated the remaining fungi creatures.
“Let’s go!” Tison yelled.
The remaining Marines were already slightly shell-shocked, without having an approximately 5’ kid wearing all black and wielding a flamethrower come racing through and frying the fungi like eggs in a skillet.
“Who--”
“Your backup,” Peace said, switching one her voice synthesizer.
“Come on, leave some for the rest of us!” Anaconda said, also switching her V/S on.
“Don’t move!” Hawk aimed just above Anaconda’s right shoulder and shot down a still-twitching fungus.
“What did you do that for?!” Anaconda cried.
“He was twitching,” Hawk said, shrugging.
“Don’t even start that conversation again,” Pariah said, emerging from the forest.
“Where’s Tison?” Shiloh asked.
“Tison! Get your butt out here!” Angel yelled.
“Do you all have a V/S switch?” Tison asked, running out of the forest.
“Lieutenant!” All the Marines snapped to attention.
“Where’s the sarge?” Tison asked.
“Dead,” one of the Marines said.
“Where’s, uh, the captain?” Pariah whispered to Anaconda, who exploded into a fit of girlish laughter that sounded just plain wrong in a man’s voice.
“Behind you,” Tigress called.
Pariah looked up, her helmet knocking against Garn’s chest-plate.
“Why’d you have to do that?” Garn asked Tigress. “I was going to sneak up and scare her!”
“You might’ve gotten a few pounds of lead through your head,” Hope pointed out.
“And they’d have to drag Pariah to the Incinerator for being ‘defective’,” Peace added.
“And I wouldn’t really like that,” Pariah said.
“I’ll make a mental note,” Garn said. “'Don’t scare a trooper.'”
“Let’s get moving,” Tison ordered. “Hawk, Shiloh, scout ahead.”
“Yes sir.” The two girls turned on their heels and ran up a hill for a quick recon and Pariah turned back to the Marines and helped the others start patching up their wounds.
When Hawk and Shiloh didn’t check in, Garn went to look for them. Then the fireworks started.
Mutations, not just fungus anymore, but trees and bushes and flowers, sprang up everywhere. What had once been beautiful was now a horrible mutated abomination.
“Hawk, Shiloh, please respond!” Tison yelled over the team comm.
“Hawk, Shiloh, get your butts to the comm!” Pariah yelled.
“Hawk here, what’s all the noise?”
“We could use some backup!” Hope answered.
“Clear out, Shiloh’s got a big gun and she isn’t in the unicorns and rainbows mood right now!”
Everyone backed off as three perfectly-aimed rockets simultaneously exploded in the heart of the Abominations, sending debris and dead mutations raining down.
“Threat neutralized,” Peace said.
“At least in this quadrant,” Tison said, checking his scanners.
“Props to the silent but deadly girl!” Tigress said.
“We’re headed your way now,” Shiloh said.
“Mckillan?” Pariah asked.
“Haven’t seen him,” Hawk said.
There was a yell, or a ‘manly scream’, over the comm.
“Captain!” Pariah yelled.
“Get off of me, you little--” the transmission was cut off. All they could hear was static.
“Pariah, try and locate him,” Tison said.
Pariah was already off and running to check Garn’s last known coordinates.
She ran through the forest, not caring if any mutations heard, smelled, sensed, or whatever the did to find her. She’d just gun them down until she found her friend.
The trooped finally broke through to a clearing where Garn, mortally wounded, was surrounded by dead Abominations.
“Captain, you okay?” Pariah asked, kneeling down next to him and taking off her helmet to examine the wounds more closely. Half of his armor was smoking, as if acid had eaten away most of it, and there was shrapnel in the captain's side. Blood was oozing out of a wound on his left shoulder.
“Get out of here, before any more come back,” he said, trying to pry his helmet off.
“You need a medic,” Pariah said, taking out a small medpac and bandaging some of his worse wounds. “You’re obviously delirious if you think I'm going to leave you.”
“Get out of here, I’m dead already!” Garn yelled.
Pariah pulled off his helmet and pulled his face close to hers the way he had when they’d first met.
“Listen to me,” she said with a deathly calm and ferocious voice. “I think you need to shut up. Zeta Squad’s motto is ‘no man left behind’. Well, you’re part of this squad, and you aren’t being left behind.” Pariah shoved her helmet back on and threw Garn over her shoulder. She ran to the rendezvous point where everyone was waiting, careful to make sure that the unconscious captain didn’t fall off.
They were able to bandage him up to stop the bleeding, but he would need a lot more than that when they got back. Right now they all just concentrated on keeping him alive.
Chapter 10: Unbreakable Spirit, Unbreakable Team
After a few months in the infirmary and another month of recuperation, Garn was up and about. He decided to pay a visit to his friends, but instead got a small surprise.
“Captain Garn M. Mckillan?” Hope said as he walked in.
“Yes, ma’am?” he asked.
“We have been talking,” Hawk said, crossing her arms and fixing him with a hard stare.
Oh great, what did I do?
“And we talked to the General as well,” Peace continued.
“Yes?” Garn asked, even more confused than before.
“Go on, Pariah,” Angel said, elbowing the trooper at her side.
“Would you like to be a permanent member of Zeta Squad?” Pariah asked.
Garn was speechless. He didn’t realize his mouth was open until Shiloh poked his arm.
“Well?” the usually quiet and patient girl asked loudly and quite impatiently.
“Sure!”
All the girls let out a whoop of triumph and went to officially welcome Garn into the squad, which meant punching his shoulder (gently) shaking his hand, high-fiving him, and just celebrate.
“Oh, Pariah?” he called as they all walked to dinner.
“Yeah?”
“Thanks for saving me, again,” he whispered into her ear.
“No problemo,” she responded. “Any one of the others would’ve done the same.”
“This team is unbreakable,” Hope said.
“And don’t forget it!” Tigress said.
“Now that we’re done with all the mushy ‘go team’ stuff...” Peace's voice trailed off.
“Race you to the cafeteria!” Anaconda challenged, taking off down the hall. The others followed at a break-neck pace. Unsurprisingly, it was an ten-way tie.
“You know what?” Hope asked as they sat down at their usual table.
“What?” Tigress asked.
“We are an unbreakable team,” Hope said, taking a bite of her food.
“With an unbreakable spirit,” Dreamer added.
“We’ll stand by each other no matter what,” Pariah said.
“And those Abominations don’t stand a chance against our mighty awesome awesomeness,” Angel said.
“So, who wants to see if they can defeat this unbreakable team in a video game?” Peace asked, munching her food happily.
“Let’s do it,” Garn said, grinning.
"Just watch out for Angel and Peace when they get rocket launchers," Hope warned. "You'll learn a whole new meaning of 'unbreakable team.'"
They all laughed.
&
nbsp; Chapter 11: Her
Lara gently pulled a blanket over the sleeping Onera’s prone figure, smiling and kissing the girl’s forehead. It’d been nearly six months since her brother’s unexpected appearance and the baby that he’d had with him had become a permanent member of her ‘family,’ which consisted of about thirteen kids, plus one who came around every once in a while.
Onera whimpered in her sleep and rolled over, kicking the blanket off. Lara looked back at the girl and smiled.
“Lara?” someone called from the door.
“Shh. The baby’s sleeping.” Lara put her finger to her lips and the child copied her.
“Let’s get you to bed.” After tucking in the last of the kids Lara went outside and breathed in the cool night air surrounding the farm. The plow-bots were powering down for the night and everything was peaceful in the surrounding forest.
Lara jerked awake when she heard a crash and realized that she must’ve dozed off in her chair and hurried back into the house. The crash had come from Onera’s room.
A few of the younger kids were huddled in a corner, cowering behind a dark figure.
“What’s happening? Who are you?” Lara demanded, putting herself between the kids and whatever was hovering above the floor. It looked like--
"Onera?" Lara gasped. The small newborn had aged at least two years. And she was hovering above the ground in front of her.
"H...He...Help me," Onera said. She fell to the ground.
Lara scrambled towards the girl and carefully picked her up. She stroked Onera's forehead and sang a soft lullaby and sighed. She knew that the child had been found in a laboratory, but now she knew why. Onera had been experimented on, and now the results were starting to surface.
Onera whimpered again.
"Shh, it's going to be all right, you'll be fine," Lara murmured, closing her eyes and rocking back and forth, trying with all her might to believe her own words. She couldn't. Lara knew that this was just the beginning.
