Free Range Protocol- Tales of the Tschaaa Infestation

by Marshall Miller

  “Lieutenant…” Torbin began to say as he turned around. Then he saw Lt. Roth. A piece of the exploding Humvee had impaled him through the back of his neck, sticking out his throat. He was gone.

  “Fuck.” Torbin paused for a moment. Then years of experience and training took over.

  “Sgt. Robbins!”

  “Yes, Gunny!”

  “The Lieutenant’s down. I’ve got it. Get the wounded and the dead on the remaining Humvee, head towards the pickup point. I’ll meet you there after I make sure that the ark goes up.”

  “Gunny, how…”

  Torbin jerked his thumb to the back, “Back of the ATV. The driver gets to stay with me. Now move!”

  Everyone snapped to, loaded the dead and wounded on the remaining Humvees, the functional troops hanging on to the vehicles where ever they could. There was were two to a motorbike, people shucking unneeded equipment. Then they were hauling ass, with Torbin watching them the vehicles recede into the darkness.

  Torbin glanced at the ATV driver. “You’re Moore, right, soldier?”

  “Yes Sir…I mean Gunny.”

  Torbin recognized him as a FNG—fucking new guy—right out of Army Infantry Training.

  “Well, Private, any time now…”

  “Gunny, look!”

  They saw the huge disc shape approaching, began to feel the electricity in the air that accompanied the battle craft that had been named a Falcon by Military Intelligence.

  “Jesus Christ on a crutch. Moore, you have a round in your rifle’s grenade launcher?”

  “Yes, Gunny.”

  “Can’t let that thing find the C-130, or the others. So, get ready for some distraction. We’re about to find out just how tough those so-called Falcons are.”

  Right as Torbin stopped speaking, there were a couple of whumps from the direction of the ark. Then, a huge explosion created a shockwave which shook the two men. A large mushroom cloud rolled up from where the ark sat. All that Torbin could see then was a large fire and a few fireworks as there were small, secondary explosions. The approaching Falcon craft spun on its axis, then was above the burning and wrecked ark in the blink of an eye.

  “Looks like we hit something nasty, Private.”

  All Moore could do was nod yes with his mouth open.

  “Come on. Time to go. By the way, are you good driving this thing?”

  Moore seemed to snap back to the task at hand. “Gunny, I used to race these four-wheelers in Eastern Washington State.”

  Torbin chuckled. “Let’s see if you can set a personal best for speed, shall we?”

  Moore smiled. “Will do, Gunny. Get on and hang on.”

  They made it to the MC-130 just as the pilot was revving its engines, the loading ramp already up. Moore accelerated the ATV in front of the aircraft so the pilot could see. Torbin heard a crackle on his radio.

  “Can you make it through the side hatch in thirty seconds, Gunny?”

  “We’ll have to.” Moore accelerated to the starboard side, the two men leaping off with the ATV still running. One of the female loadmasters had popped the hatch, and began to pull Torbin and Moore inside, as the MC-130 began to accelerate down the makeshift landing strip. Torbin and Moore made it into large cargo bay. There were some happy cries of greeting as the other survivors saw them. Then the aircraft rotated into the air, and next a warning over the intercom system to hang on. Everyone grabbed a strap or a piece of the aircraft to hang onto, as the pilot put the plane into a hard left bank at about five hundred feet. Then the MC-130 leveled out, heading back the way they had come.

  Torbin made his way up to the cockpit, quietly entered and sat on a jump seat. A couple of minutes later, Captain White spoke over her shoulder.

  “Lieutenant Roth didn’t make it, did he?”

  “No Ma’am. All I can say is it was quick.”

  There was silence for a few moments, then Captain White spoke again.

  “I was looking forward to buying him a drink.”

  “Buy one for him, Ma’am. Toast him. He did his job well.”

  “Yes, Gunny. I think you all did. Sorry I had to almost leave you. But we picked up a large bogie headed our way on the AC-130’s radar.”

  “Funny you should mention that…” Torbin then began to give her the quick and dirty story about the alien Falcon. When he was done, the Captain whistled.

  “Gunny, it looks like we dodged a big bullet.”

  “Yes Ma’am. That Falcon, or whatever they want to call it, was looking for that large humanoid, or whatever what it was. The ark blowing up distracted it, and let us all get away. Otherwise, it would have been two men against a battle cruiser.”

  “You’ve got balls, Gunny. Since you’re a guy I can say that. Thanks for the thoughts, but I for one am glad you didn’t have to do a last stand at the Alamo.”

  “Yes, Captain. So am I. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to be with the troops.” He turned to leave the cockpit.

  “Gunny.”

  “Yes Ma’am.”

  “I’m not a Marine, but, well, Semper Fi.”

  “Semper Fi, Captain. Consider yourself an honorary Jarhead.”

  She and her co-pilot were laughing as he went down to the cargo bay.

  Twenty-four hours later, Torbin was sitting in an office at Edwards Air Force Base, waiting to be called to a debriefing in a secure room. The room was shielded from all known types of eavesdropping, even some unknown from what Torbin had been told.

  He had already done a quick debrief when the aircraft had returned to Edwards. That had been with Military Intelligence. This debrief was with some spook from D.C.

  Torbin laughed to himself. There was no real D.C. left. So, just like Torbin Bender, the spook was a man without a home. Torbin sipped his coffee, sat, and waited. He had gotten good at waiting in his Military career. Yessiree, hurry up and wait—the mantra of the Corps.

  Then he heard steps approaching, and he set down his cup, and stood up.

  A tall and wiry man with dark hair and a tan, wearing plain urban camos with no rank, no insignia or name tag of any kind, walked into the waiting room.

  “Gunnery Sergeant Torbin Bender?”

  “Yes Sir.”

  “Come with me.”

  Torbin followed the man down the hallway to a windowless room with an electronic keypad lock to it. The man punched in some codes in, then placed his thumb on an electronic fingerprint pad. The door buzzed, and they went in. Torbin remained standing at parade rest, as the Spook sat at a nondescript wooden table. There was a somewhat padded chair opposite where the man was sitting. The supposed Intelligence Agent looked up at Torbin and frowned.

  “Why don’t you sit down, Gunny.”

  “Just waiting for you to say so, Sir.”

  “Alright. Sit down.”

  Torbin sat, still stiff. He had been told that at times he was too much of a hardass, too rigid. He didn’t care. It was the way he was, and he wasn’t about to apologize for it now.

  “I’m Agent Leer. Who I’m with doesn’t matter. Especially now that all the Headquarters Buildings in D.C. are empty, and many more are rubble. But what does matter is that I have been tasked by the Commander in Chief to verify the information we have received so far on the Battle of the Yuma Overpass, and to obtain anything new you may know.”

  Torbin frowned. “Excuse me, Sir. But Battle of the Yuma Overpass? Who in the hell came up with that name? And why?”

  Agent Leer sighed. “Someone up the chain came up with it. Seems we need some victories and heroes right now. We can’t have either without a catchy name for what happened.”

  “Heroes? Victories? And who in hell is the Commander in Chief? Did the President make it?”

  “No, Gunny. We are all the way down to the Secretary of Veteran Affairs.” Agent Leer chuckled. “Seems ironic, don’t you think? I think before this is over, we’ll all be veterans.”

  Torbin was a bit stunned. That many losses in the civilian chain of command? How could t
hat happen?

  Agent Leer must have noticed the look of concern on Torbin’s face, for he began speaking and responded.

  “As you know, during the first twelve hours, everyone thought it was a natural disaster. ‘Of biblical proportions’ was what the talking heads called it. They even started arguing over on the boob tube as to who coined the phrase first. Then the Russians started screaming, the Deltas and what we now call Falcons showed up. Then the arks. harvester arks is what they are, as confirmed by your mission. Which is why we are here.”

  Agent Leer looked sharply at Torbin. “I saw those video transmissions from your helmet cam, also the digital pictures and those pictures from that disposable camera. But I need to know what isn’t on the cameras. Some of the feed was interrupted. There are some gaps.”

  “Ask away,” Torbin said. “I’m an open book. Never was a spy, never wanted to be one. I was ordered to do the mission, I did it. Case closed, as far as I’m concerned.”

  The Agent tossed a file in front of him. “Start by explaining those pictures.”

  Torbin looked. There was were a couple of cloudy shots of the fake man whose throat he cut, laying on the ark cockpit floor.

  “That’s all you have of this POS?”

  “We have some blurry feed, audio, but until you busted that video screen, the frequency it was transmitting on interfered with your video feed. Which gives us some info on how they communicate.

  “So what’s the beef, Agent?”

  “You killed him. He would have been a wealth of information.”

  Torbin exploded. “What was I to do? Let him kill me? What about that weapon I recovered? Was that just a piece of crap also?”

  Agent Leer leaned back in his chair a bit, steepled his fingers, and said nothing.

  “Well? What are you supposed to do, Agent Leer, if you don’t get the answers you want? Shoot my ass? Care to dance?” Torbin began to stand up. After what he had been through, he was not going to put up with some shit from some spook agent.

  Agent Leer let out a sigh. “Please, sit down, Gunny. I was told I had to ask these questions by my higher-ups. Like you, I follow orders. There is a high level of frustration as things are not going well.”

  “No shit, Sherlock.” Torbin sat down, still fuming. He was an action person, a doer. Not someone to sit around, sift through Intelligence briefs and navel gaze.

  Agent Leer snorted. “We are losing or have lost both the West Coast and the East Coast. That odd creature on the screen feed you thought looked a bit like an octopus? Bingo. These so called Tschaaa are cephalopods, like squids, scuttlefish and octopus, all rolled into one. The head looks a bit more doomed shape, like maybe a crab. And they have appendages and tentacles like our sea creatures.”

  “You got all that information from my blurry video feed?”

  “No. Naval forces around the world have been fighting them, have visual contact, some photos, and a few recovered body parts.” Agent Leer stopped, sat still, his eyes seemed to focus on something not in the room.

  “To head off your questions, no, the Navy is not doing well. Some small versions of the arks landed in all the major bodies of water, discharging Tschaaa warriors. Yes, they have warriors just as we do, not just robots, cyborgs, gray aliens, and lizards. They also have a very efficient set of what we would call limpet mines and underwater torpedos. Being as they are amphibious ocean-based creatures, we soon had a large number of naval surface vessels with holed hulls.”

  “What about out our SEALS and combat divers? Weren’t they used?”

  “We are a land based species. We swim as a secondary function. The Tschaaa, or Squids as many in our limited government have started calling them, are apparently born in the ocean. They easily kick our ass under water.”

  Torbin paused, thinking. Then he asked, “Our submarines. What about them?”

  “Still a few in deep water. They get swarmed in more shallow seas. The Tschaaa seem to see them as a personal affront.”

  “So the world’s navies…”

  “Pretty much decimated. Naval aircraft are all land-based now.”

  Torbin thought back to the Falcon.

  “How is our Air Force doing? How are they handling the Delta fighters and those Falcons?”

  “They’re trying. The Deltas use a form of scramjet engine, and also some type of advanced thruster we’re trying to figure out. Zero to almost infinity it seems in the blink of an eye when they get in trouble. But that’s an exaggeration. They can accelerate like a bat out of hell. Despite that, they’ve taken casualties here, in Russia, over Japan for sure. They can’t always outrun our missiles and our guns.”

  “The Falcons, you call them. Like I saw. What about them?”

  “Well, the Russians said they took a couple down with tank gun, tube launched missiles they use. On Day Three one of our fighters took out an ark, then a Delta escort. Then the pilot rammed…” The Agent frowned, then seemed to go pale a bit. He looked at some papers in one of his folders.

  “You have a…relative in the Air Force.”

  “Yes, Agent. My younger Brother, William. He’s an Air Force Puke, a Fighter Pilot. I lost track of him the last few days…” Torbin’s voice trailed off as the look on the Agent’s face sunk in.

  “Ah, shit.” Agent Leer looked directly at Torbin. “There is no easy way to say this, do this. No one ever thought, put two and two together…” Leer cleared his throat.

  “Captain William Bender, while defending the Port Area of Los Angeles from further incursions and landings, intercepted with his wingman a harvester ark. He took that down with a couple of missiles. An escorting Delta fighter attacked him and he took that out also. A couple minutes later, a Falcon battle cruiser showed up, blasted your brother’s wingman, and tried to latch onto your brother’s fighter with a form of tractor beam and metallic tentacles. I guess they wanted to examine the human who had taken out two of their craft so quickly.” Agent Leer paused, then continued.

  “Your brother William rammed the Falcon. It bellied in, his fighter still impaled in it. That’s the last report we have of him.”

  Torbin sat frozen. He had always assumed he would have been killed first, being in Delta Force, the SEALS, and constantly in harm’s way. Torbin had started at age 18, while William had gone active duty after college, at age twenty-one. William was two years his junior, had stayed on active duty when Torbin had gone reserve, and was up for Major below the zone…

  Torbin quickly wiped a tear away. Marines don’t cry.

  “Gunny, this is a hell of a way to find out…”

  “Not your fault. It just happened, what, a day and a half, two days ago? No one saw…”

  “Nothing. The limited forces we had there were beaten back. The Falcon did not explode. It was still sitting there when the land forces abandoned Los Angeles. They’re all deployed around Edwards now.”

  Torbin was numb. He had seen his share of death. He’d caused a lot of it. Now it was personal and really hit home.

  “You say the West Coast is—overrun, I guess would be a good word—with these fucking Squids and company?”

  “They control from ten to twenty miles in from the water. They landed mutual supporting arks, some of the Squids came up from the ocean. While the Tschaaa are amphibious, they can move somewhat on land. With the rock strikes starting fires and spreading panic, everything fell apart fast.”

  “San Diego…gone?”

  “They’re all over there, and down into Mexico, especially Baja.”

  Torbin took a deep breath, let it out. “My parents were in San Diego. Their neighborhood was hit by a good sized rock in the first twelve hours. I was unable to contact them after that. Then I got activated.” He paused.

  “I guess San Diego is gone.”

  “It looks that way, Gunny.”

  Both men sat quietly, both lost in their own thoughts. Then Agent Leer spoke.

  “If it’s any consolation, the information and video you and your men obtained f
rom Yuma was excellent. It helped confirm our suspicions on how these Tschaaa are operating. One of the men even brought back this harpoon thing that was lodged in his body armor. Those robots seem to be land fishing.”

  “By the way, Agent, how did we learn what they call themselves?”

  “Radio broadcast intercepts. Though it doesn’t look like they or their minions know anything about communications security, so it wasn’t exactly difficult. Some of their, ‘Front Men’ we are calling them, beings who have been sitting here watching us for a while, coordinated some of their activities in Earth languages. Referred to the Tschaaa Lords. So, we figured that’s what those in charge, what we think of as Squids, call themselves.”

  Torbin grunted. “That fake man I killed, you think he was one of these front men?”

  “Affirmative, Gunny. That’s why the higher ups were so pissed you killed it. They really wanted to water board one of them, find out what makes them tick.”

  “Not in the cards that day, Agent.”

  Both men sat silent again. Then Agent Leer spoke once more.

  “Look, I know it’s easy for me to say, but your brother died a hero. And based on your actions, heroics seem to run in your family.”

  Torbin locked eyes with Agent Leer. “I’ll trade all the heroics in the world for having my little brother here, so I could buy him a drink.”

  Torbin walked back to his temporary quarters in daze. He had never thought in his wildest dreams that he would be the surviving family member, even out living his parents. Hell, he thought they would have attended his funeral by now, based on the shit he had been involved in. Now, he didn’t even have the ability to have a funeral service for his family. He didn’t even have any remains.

  A rage began to course through him as he thought about all those families who would never have the chance to say goodbye, have a casket funeral. The fucking Squids ate what would be in a casket.