DinoMechs: Battle Force Jurassic

by Isaac Stone

  “I will tell you a story which is no shit true,” he began. “You ever hear of the Sirius Rebellion? Probably not because it was over pretty quick. But before the Force could send anyone out there to take the planet down a notch, they had to rely on a local garrison. The garrison was under staffed because no one thought anything would happen out there.”

  “When it hit the rotor, myself and a hundred other scrubs where there on our first assignment with Abdullah. We had to leave the barracks because the rebels were about to burn the place down. I was with two squads the sergeant led outside of the barracks to take possession of the spaceport so we could get some help from Orbital. We made it to the gates of the spaceport and there was a fraking mob with clubs, knives and guns. Two hundred of them and twenty of us. We were low on plasma charges and couldn’t expect to do more than kill the first twenty.”

  “Do you know what he said?” Zhuang asked me. I shook my head.

  “Abdullah turned around and told us something special, “he continued. “He told us there was no fucking way we could take that entrance but there was no way back either. He told us we were going to hit that formation with everything we had and those bastards would think twice the next time they took on the Solar Force.”

  “What happened?” I had to ask.

  “It was a bloodbath. We had more charges left for the rifles than we thought and gutted the lot of them. Only four of us lived to tell about it, including me. Abdullah didn’t make it. I still don’t know why I survived. The Force landed that night and put down the rebellion. I was one of the body’s they dug out of the pile. They didn’t think I would live, but I did for some reason.”

  I saw him stare off into space again at the forest. “I still don’t know why I had to live and he didn’t. The universe doesn’t give a shit and let the good men die all the time.”

  TWENTY ONE

  The drop shuttle arrived the next day for us, I made sure all my guys were loaded up, and had their kits prepped before we left. Solar Force decided to contract a private mercenary company, called Mandrake or something, to handle routing out the last of the Invaders on White Skull. In the meantime Raptor Nine and its dino mech were desperately needed elsewhere.

  I found out Terry was much better. The Force took him with his rider to a special veterinary asteroid station they build to handle injured dinosaurs. He was far better off than we’d thought because it was difficult to tell what kind of condition he was in on the surface of the planet. I was relieved to hear it.

  “You’re still thinking about Hans,” Hamid said to me as we were loading everything up to go. It doesn’t take long to pack your gear up once you’ve done it a number of times.

  “I just don’t understand why he had to go and run out there like he did,” I told him. “He knew there might be snipers in the trees. Crazy, stupid thing to do.” I locked up a case that carried the charges for my plasma rifle.

  “I think Hans was one of these kids in school who never go to hang out with the cool people,” Hamid commented. “As a Raptor, he was one of the cool kids. Too bad it ended the way it did for him.”

  “No argument there,” I answered. “I’ll know what to watch for the next time.”

  “At least for us there is a next time.”

  We turned and walked into the open ramp that led into the drop shuttle. It was going to be a long war and none of us knew when it would end.

  EPISODE 2: PLANET CHAOS

  ONE

  There is nothing like deep space to make you reflect on life choices. After our experience on White Skull, the rest of the guys in my unit were ready to take an extended vacation. We’d had one of the toughest times of our life down there and lost more than a few comrades. Every one of us who left the shuttle when it docked with the Ratoga starship had the same look on our face. We all knew it could have been us down there, dead on some alien world where humanity wasn’t supposed to tread.

  Zhuang’s story about his old Sergeant made me realize how precious life could be at any given moment. It made me understand there were things in the universe that meant more than piling up stacks of coin. When I was growing up, all anyone could talk about was leaving the planet and going to some off world colony where you could earn a decent pay or farm some land. None of us had experience farming, but we knew what it was about if you went to school or watched the videos. It seemed a better deal to me than jumping some rube from the outer boroughs for his coin purse or identity card.

  There was no gravity on the Ratoga, since we wouldn’t be in deep space very long. The Ratoga was supposed to take us through the jump point and then to some other theater of battle. We spent our time cleaning uniforms and equipment. I hated that the plasma rifle parts floated away unless you tied them down. Even the cleaner could turn into little spheres and drift off if you weren’t careful. Everybody was trying to cut down on their operations budget, even with the Invaders kicking down our door. I mean, was a little gravity too much to ask for?

  Terry and his handler went directly to a veterinary clinic in orbit around Earth. I found out later that the Solar Force had orbital stations where they fixed up the big lizards between battles. There were all kinds of complaints about using the dinosaurs for battle at the start of the war. Some people said it was immoral to use them for purposes they were never intended. What purpose a sixty-foot long lizard was supposed to serve I could never decide. Besides, they were all brought back from extinction through DNA manipulation. Anyway, the complaints died down when the first few reports were released on Earth about the slaughter perpetuated by the Invaders.

  Most of the guys under me spent their days playing cards with a magnetic deck that wouldn’t drift off. There wasn’t much to do between the jump points and Command wasn’t about to tell us where we would be sent. I tried to keep my edge up in the gymnasium. Every Raptor was expected to put a certain amount of time in for physical training to keep from going fat. The problem with most military lives is not the terror of combat; it’s the constant boredom when you aren’t deployed. I began to long for news of some kind of battle since that would mean we would have something to do.

  I didn’t see much of Zhuang, just at morning roll call. After the rest of the unit would fall out, or float off in this case, we would have a brief meeting. He wanted to know the usual. Morale, health and skill levels were always a concern. I assumed the Force kept files on everyone. I’m sure they knew all about my fun arrest record back on Earth. I’d never asked the other men about what they did to end up here. I didn’t have to because most of them wouldn’t shut up about it. And, of course, no one was guilty of a thing.

  Every now and then, someone would admit to being caught with something not supposed to have in their possession. Usually they would wail about how the magistrate wouldn’t listen to them, their mother was dying of cancer, how they could know where I put it and, my favorite, they were messing with me because the cops didn’t have the right paperwork! Solar help me, to hear us tell it, we were all as innocent as the angels and just ended up in the joint because of a bad turn. It was always someone else’s fault. I suppose it’s human nature to blame other people, but eventually you need to come clean.

  What I hated about the joint was the “optional” religious attendance, an element from prison that apparently carried over into the Raptor corps. Once a felon always a felon so they say. Any number of cults and sects would get permission to come in and do services to save our downtrodden souls. Of course, the first thing any of the guys wanted to know was if there were any women in the group who would be there. The services themselves were a sight to behold with men crying to heaven and any number of saints or gods to save them. I suppose it was one way to relieve the boredom of breaking rocks on all day. Worst of all was when the bulls had to shut down the service to keep the inmates from going out of control if one or more of us chose to ham it up just for fun.

  There was a rumor floating around that thirteen of the most dangerous criminals were tossed into a sui
cide mission by the Force and dropped into an Invader convoy on some populated colony world. These were supposed to be the worst of the bunch, sociopaths and psychos that were almost impossible to manage, not good little Raptors like us. Each one was given a plasma rifle with enough charges to cause severe damage to the enemy, but no more. A pick-up wasn’t even part of the deal. They slapped Solar Force uniforms on them and dumped the whole lot with a single use capsule in front of an advancing Invader column. The column was ripped to shreds by plasma bolts, but none of the insane squad was ever heard from again. To this day, I wonder what happened to that bunch. I’m afraid we’ll never know for sure. That’s the kind of thing that we talk and think about when we get cagey and bored. Meanwhile the Invaders were out there, getting harder while we got softer. What we really needed was a mission.

  For our sins they gave us one.

  I think I heard that in an old video once.

  TWO

  The shower system in deep space, where there is no reliable gravity, is run in the manner of a giant bubble machine. You step into a compartment with a bar of soap and hit a switch, after you’ve adjusted the shower for preferred temperature. The system will gauge how much hot or cold water is separable, and then send it your direction in the form of thousands of tiny bubbles. Since water forms spheres in the absence of gravity, it’s the only way to clean you without issue. The soap part isn’t much trouble once the water hits your skin. It pours all over you. I was used to it after the third day, but it still causes me some grief every time I am in deep space for long periods of time.

  I opened the door to the shower and floated out into the main part of the hygiene area on the starship. Towels will float off too if you let them, so people are dried by a continuous stream of warm air, which comes out of a port in the wall. I floated over to the dryer and turned it on. There was a hum while the machine made some calculations for my size and identification, but soon the refreshing air blew out of the unit and had me feeling good.

  I floated over to my locker and found the uniform the Force gave us to wear on the starship and began to put it on. There was a sound to my right and I turned to see Hamid float into the hygienic area. I nodded at him.

  “They have you on duty soon?” he asked me. “I’ve just come off the main deck. Not much happening up there. Guess this is the way it is until we reach the drop point. Pretty boring, I’d rather shoot stalkers.”

  “Know what you mean,” I responded. “Place is dull until we get to the other side. Have you seen…?”

  My voice was cut short by the sound of an alarm. A blue light flashed in the hygiene area and I hasty snapped my uniform in place. We had five minutes to get to the station or be docked a pay grade. No way in hell was I losing money for being tardy.

  Hamid swore and went out the hatch to the main shaft behind me. People who were used to deep space knew how to move across the starship with little effort. It was easy to tell who the old timers were and who were the newbies by the way each group made its way to the main deck. The old timers stayed in the middle of the shaft and used pivot points to soar in the direction they wanted to go. The newbies bounced all over the place as they tried to get around the way you would on Earth.

  “What do you think this is about?” Hamid asked me as we pulled our way to the center. We did a better job of it, but our progress was a joke compared to the ship’s crew. I watched a young woman, probably a technician of some type, spin over me with little effort.

  “I hope this isn’t another drill,” I told him. “I hate those things. We’ll end up at the deck and Zhuang will be there with his grandfather’s stopwatch whining about how slow our butts are today.” The door to the station was in sight and we continued to make progress to it. There was a small crowd that worked their way inside, but I hoped we would make the time cut-off.

  We were the last two into the main deck. The rest of the Grunt Stompers were close to the station when the alert came across. We were stuck at the furthest point from it. At least I wasn’t in the shower. I’d heard about guys who came into the station with a towel wrapped around their waist.

  When we came inside, there was Zhuang with his watch. He looked at us and shook his head. We assumed this was a drill again until we saw the officers crowd around the central command area of the station.

  “Almost didn’t make it on time,” the sergeant told us and shook his head again. He put his watch away and pointed to the area over the command center.

  We called it “the plate”, since it resembled one. It was the holographic display for the bridge on the ship. From any point inside the deck, you could see it. You could also see the location of where you were inside the Ratoga. Right now, it was adjusted to show the broken feed from the surface of a planet.

  The camera, which sent the feed, showed three armored kaiju rampaging through a small settlement. Invaders in their green suit armor ploughed through the devastation caused by the beasts and shot everything that moved. This was a complete blitzkrieg. The Invaders were on full assault mode and exterminating every human they could find. I wasn’t sure where it was, but it was similar to most of the videos I’d seen taken of the alien assaults.

  “Chaos,” the ship’s captain said to us. As the senior officer, he was the only one who was authorized to make the presentation. Everyone in the room was quiet and listened to what he had to say next.

  “You’re looking at a planet we used to call Chaos,” he announced again. “The Invaders took it forty seven hours ago. They opened up their portal right over the equator and came down with everything they needed to seize the capitol of the colony world.”

  “I don’t think there are many survivors outside the smaller city of Imani,” he told us. “Chaos had only two major cities and they took the larger one, which is the capitol, yesterday.” He made an adjustment to the screen and we saw more sights of the devastation before the camera went blank.

  “Chaos isn’t a large colony settlement, but it is one of the most important to the Alliance,” the captain continued to speak. “While I’m talking a whole new assault force is assembling near our jump point to take it back. They will hit the place with everything they have and burn the Invaders down in their sleep, if that is what it takes. The Invaders don’t expect this to happen and they were light on they committed to the invasion. It was enough to do the job, but they are about to get the hammer of God dropped on them. If nothing else, they’ll never try this surprise tactic again.”

  “However,” he continued, “There are still a number of settlers holed up in the city I mentioned. This is where Raptor Nine comes into play. You are to be dropped into the middle of this trash heap and rescue them while the rest of Battle Force Jurassic goes up the middle, as it were. A number of settlers escaped when the Invaders showed. We don’t know how many survived, but we do know there are substantial groups in the capital city. We need to pull them out before Chaos turns into a galactic anvil. I will coordinate with the NCO’s and officers to make this as smooth as possible. There are small settlements we need to evacuate as well. The Force doesn’t have a lot of time, which is why I sounded the alert.”

  He paused to let it sink in, and then Zhuang floated out in front of us and yelled.

  “All squads make your formations!” he cried out. “Give me a ball of two!” In freefall, you couldn’t form columns or any of the other configurations that a military company used. Instead, we were instructed to move into balls that could float in alignment. It wasn’t easy to make the spheres, but everyone knew whose foot to grab or which shoulder to touch. In minutes, we hung together like a set of packed billiards.

  An officer floated down into the combinations. I could tell his rank by the insignia on his uniform and the way he carried himself. This was a full-fledged Colonel, the kind you didn’t see very often on these trips.

  “We need another sergeant for this mission,” he instructed everyone. “I’ve been instructed to create a field commission so long as we are at war. I’ve
talked with all the NCO’s and come up with a name that I’m sure you all know: Rich Claymore. Clay, get your ass over here!” I couldn’t believe what I heard.

  With something bordering on grace, I floated in front of the colonel and held my form. The Raptors were big on appearances when news cameras were on, which they were, and I didn’t want to mess this one up. I knew that we were just as much a piece of living propaganda as much as we were a functional military unit.

  The colonel moved toward me and slapped the stripes on the side of my sleeves. He did it in one motion. “Sergeant Claymore, you are still out-ranked by Zhuang and don’t you forget it. No, you don’t have to call him ‘sir’ any longer, but you must defer to his experience. Do I make myself clear?”

  I nodded. “Good, now get with him and plan this thing out. We don’t have a lot of time before the drop. Dismissed!”

  THREE

  Zhuang and I rapidly moved to compile a group for the drop. He wanted to be the first on the ground, but we rolled a dice for it and, because I am the galaxy’s most favored son, I won the right to go in first.

  “I want to see that damn thing now!” he told me after we rolled. I let him examine them until he was convinced they weren’t loaded. Later, I wanted to tell him how I switched out the dice each time we rolled, but that would give away one of my old tricks. You never tell your best secrets.

  “You’re going to want Hamid, I know,” Zhuang, told me later. “I would expect it. What about the rest of your old squad? You’ll need two corporals.” He had the roster in his hand and we looked it over again.

  “I’ll make Hamid corporal, “I told him. We floated around the desk in his office. The names drifted up on a fountain of light from the desk and all we had to do was touch the ones we wanted to see.