The planet selected to host humanity’s second home in the galaxy was named New Earth, which would in time become the collective name for the colony. Although smaller in size than its namesake, there was ample room on New Earth for the travelers of the Long Exodus. Three years later, outposts were established on the other two habitable planets, Barribes and Xhialgong, the first step toward expanding the colony beyond New Earth itself.
After several years of negotiations the Hrustians agreed to transfer to humanity their technology for faster-than-light travel. This decision was not made lightly. Despite New Earth’s development of advanced weapons for protection, the leaders of this commerce-minded alien race were convinced of humanity’s dedication to peaceful coexistence with other species.
With faster-than-light propulsion, return travel to Old Earth took just a fraction of the time of the Long Exodus and an expedition was organized. More than two centuries after their ancestors left humanity’s first home, descendants of the original Hera Fleet returned.
Old Earth’s recovery had continued in the interim but many remained concerned about natural resource depletion. Nothing had been heard from Shangdi Fleet, the other Community Ships launched in 2288, so those interested in a fresh start were invited to join the New Earth colony. Two hundred million people made the trip to the colony during the next decade.
Then interest in cross-space immigration waned, in large part due to concerns that key policies of the colony’s High Council were contradictory to Old Earth’s Utopian Ideal. At the same time, business and industrial concerns concluded the narrow profits realized through trade between Old and New Earth were not enough to continue dedicated flights.
Travel between the two centers of humanity in the galaxy steadily dwindled until the outbreak of the Vyptellian War, when it ceased entirely. The war ended what is considered to be the first era of New Earth’s history, a period of great discoveries in every facet of life as humanity sought to find its place among the greater galaxy. The next sixteen years would be a stark contrast.
Papa Sierra
Platoon Sergeant Siengha sat back and studied the new lives entrusted to her care by Command. Likely two of the five would be dead or lost to injury by month’s end, if not sooner, and the rest might not see the year out. Siengha knew this not from some official report but from seeing it time and again.
The forty-three men and women of Third Platoon, Company C, 451st Regiment, 95th Expeditionary Brigade, were loaded into three air transports and headed to shore up a defensive position on the northern peninsula of the fourth-largest land formation on planet Neptec-2. The Neptec system was as much a backwater as could be found in the Vyptellian War, with each side holding one of the three habitable planets circling the medium yellow dwarf star and fighting for possession of the third.
Backwater or not, since Command decided to set up shop on the planet more than a decade earlier thousands of humans had died on the arid plains and rocky crags of Neptec-2.
In the lead transport, Siengha studied the troops around her. The newbies squirmed in composite seats which, in theory, were extruded in a shape comfortable to the average human’s lower body. That theory, like so much of what Command said and did, was garbage. The sergeant knew this also from experience. Granted, she’d learned to sleep in the composite seats whether bone-tired or fresh from the rack. But think them comfortable? Not once.
The transport bucked a little, thermals or wildlife-evasion, causing the wriggling replacements to momentarily stop and look wildly around. Another sign of their complete newness; most of the experienced soldiers dozed off as soon as the transport launched and the rest sat quietly consumed by their own thoughts. Siengha hoped the outpost was quiet when they landed so she could learn at least a little more about the newbies than just their names.
The replacements arrived that morning along with the movement frag order. Their armor was clean and unmarred, their weapons and carrypacks warehouse-new. The three men and two women had regulation short hair and each was trying hard to maintain a blank expression to mask the awe and fear. But, their eyes gave them away.
Put ‘em in the oldest, grungiest field gear, she thought, and I can still find the fresh meat by their eyes.
Siengha was five-foot-eight, average for a human but just a bit taller than most Vyps. She was lean with well-toned muscles, having come to believe early on in the war that faster was better: in close-contact fights she could land two strikes on an opponent to their one. It was something she’d proved time and again.
Her skin was a deep olive and her eyes were a brown so dark as to appear black; her nose was crooked after being broken more than once and a narrow scar ran from her left ear to chin. She maintained a stoic expression and a hard, confident edge to her voice, knowing soldiers would look to her to confirm or reject their own fears — another theory upheld in countless battles since her first.
And her first battle had been the first of the war, back when the opposing sides knew very little about each other. Just turned eighteen, she joined the military a few months before war was declared, hoping to see other planets and life forms, and accepting the Expeditionary Corps was the cheapest way to do so. Expedited through advanced ground tactics training, she reported to her division right before it shipped out on humanity’s first offensive.
It was on a planet designated XO-5916c, and two days after an uncontested landing Private Siengha’s platoon was tail-end Charlie — one of many archaic Old Earth sayings still used by the military — at the end of an advancing column. Now, years later Siengha could no longer remember where they were going, just that she and her fellow soldiers marched with confidence. They were told they would be out-numbered, but Command assured them their technological edge would prevail.
Human body armor would withstand most projectiles and edged weapons while the charged slugs from their own assault weapons would mow down the Vyps. Also, squadrons of Fleet ships patrolling above and batteries of long-range cannon to their rear were standing by to strike the aliens whenever and wherever they appeared.
To be sure, they were scared. They were at war with an enemy Command said was ruthless, an alien species devoid of human qualities such as mercy and remorse. Siengha and her peers were told over and over that war meant killing: taking the life of an enemy before your own life is taken from you. Notions of fair play were meaningless in war.
The column crested a ridge and began to snake down into a shallow depression. Thick vegetation, bushes and broad-bladed grasses, covered the ground on either side of the line of soldiers. Taking in the scene as she crossed the top of the ridge — vast rolling hills bereft of any sign of habitation or life, brighter through her face shield, thanks to lumen-enhancing software — Siengha tried and failed to think of a comparable place on her home planet of Xhialgong.
Her eyes darted constantly — right, left, up, ahead, up, right, left, up ahead — as she tried to locate every sound that wasn’t the dull, metallic thuds and clanks of armored soldiers moving in column or the whisper of the platoon net in her earpiece. She sipped water from the tube in her helmet but her mouth stayed dry and her tongue felt like a piece of tree bark when she licked her lips.
Yes, they were scared but they trusted their training and their equipment. They had been told what to expect, and were confident.
Then the Vyps attacked, swarming from prepared positions and spider holes in the deep vegetation on either side of the path. Later investigations blamed the catastrophe on commanders whose inexperience allowed movement of the column on an existing, and therefore predictable, route. But in the moment, when the screams of the dying mixed with the throaty roar of firing weapons, there was no thought other than for survival.
Command told them the Vyps would out-number them, but such an assessment, delivered in standard briefing monotone, did nothing to prepare them for the sheer number of gray-clad aliens surging forward. Much later, Siengha remembered hearing so many so many so many so many but she couldn’t rec
all if the feverish chant was from her own mouth or over the comm net.
In those early days of the war the Vyptellians preferred close combat, their main tactic being to overwhelm and kill with edged weapons. Attached to the armor of one arm each Vyp soldier had a blade with a divided end that extended about a foot past the end of arm. One part of the blade ran straight out to a sharp point while the other curved away and back. The reptilian aliens had just three broad, flat fingers on each hand but the blade’s arm-mount and split design allowed them to powerfully slash or stab at their enemies. Most also carried pistols firing energy pulses as secondary weapons and a few wielded axes or hammers.
Ignoring her fear, Siengha began to fire blindly into the mass of aliens to her right — there was no time to aim. A Vyp fell with each charged slug fired but the thick waves of aliens raced forward and in moments she and the soldiers next to her were surrounded. The humans used their assault rifles to ward off the Vyps in front of them only to fall from blows and blade thrusts from behind and the side. For every Vyp knocked aside five more surged forward — the aliens killed many of their own kind in the feverish assault — and every human who dropped meant more Vyps could attack those who remained standing.
Assault rifles and limbs broke as the men and women of the column simply disappeared beneath the waves of attackers. Alien blades hacked and jabbed at the humans, who found their armor could not withstand repeated blows and thrusts. Battered front and back, Siengha fell to the spongy ground among the bodies of her fellow soldiers. One of her arms was broken and she felt a wrenching pain in her lower back as he dropped.
Frantically, she looked up to see a Vyp standing over her; the alien’s blade point came down on her chest, knocking the air from her body. Miraculously the armor held and when the force of the blow turned her sideways the blade slid between her torso and arm. The Vyps around her thought she had been impaled and moved on to find other victims. Siengha blacked out.
When she came to her senses again, the battle was over. She lay on her side, pulses of pain radiating throughout her body. Siengha gritted her teeth to keep from moaning and tried to breathe as shallowly as possible. Without looking she could sense figures moving around her and occasionally she heard the thud of metal on metal, followed by muffled screaming.
She became aware her earpiece was whispering softly, an all-nets message. She used her eyes to call up the control panel to her faceshield and mute it, unsure how well the Vyps could hear or if they knew the system was only active for living soldiers. Muting the earpiece automatically enabled the text feature and dimly lit words began to scroll on one side of her faceshield: … SURVIVORS SCATTERED THROUGHOUT THE COLUMN. REMAIN HIDDEN. RESCUE OPTIONS ARE BEING EXAMINED … THERE ARE SURVIVORS SCATTERED THROUGHOUT THE COLUMN. REMAIN HIDDEN …
The young private lay unmoving for several hours as the sounds of Vyps moving around the bodies faded. Later she would learn the aliens were focusing their attention on the head of the column, removing the bodies of both species, the first demonstration of a Vyp practice that would generate debate and unease in years to come. Why take the human dead? For that matter, what about the injured? Were they taken prisoner or simply killed on the spot and disposed of with the rest?
The darkest theories held the captured and dead humans were eaten by the aliens, a concept the government and Command tried with success to suppress. The only thing Command knew for sure was the Vyps were studying their new foes, examining the human body for weak points and adapting human weapons technology for their own use. Within months Vyp soldiers would focus on the most vulnerable areas of human armor such as the shoulder, hip and knee joints; within a year the aliens would be able to disrupt human communications systems; and within two years the Vyps relegated edged weapons to backup or ceremonial roles in favor of assault rifles firing charged slugs.
All that was in a future that Private Siengha wasn’t sure she would live to see while laying among her fallen comrades, nervously listening for alien footsteps and trying to ignore the pain in her arm, back and chest. Her armor included a first aid system that could inject pain medication, activated through the faceshield interface, but she wasn’t sure how the drugs would affect her coherency. So she lay on the ground, wrapped in pain and fear, waiting to be told how and when she would be saved.
Finally the scrolling alert disappeared, replaced a short time later with a long message explaining the plan the higher-ups had come up with. One minute after the given signal, a two-minute cannonade would blanket the area with projectiles fused to deploy charged slugs parallel to and four feet above the ground — killing patrolling Vyps while (hopefully) not harming the surviving (and assumed to be prone) humans. After the initial cannonade, survivors had one minute to exfiltrate along the column’s line of advance before a second round of cannon fire to deal with any Vyps reacting to the survivor’s escape.
The message ended with coordinates to a rally point.
Siengha read the plan with a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. After laying still for hours, with pain coursing through her body, would she be able to stand when the time came? Even if she could, would she be able to move quickly enough to clear the area before the second cannonade? Assuming the Vyps reacted like humans and dropped to the ground during the first cannonade, how many would survive to contest the escape?
The message looped five times before Siengha’s viewscreen flashed and went blank. Then a timer appeared and began counting down from 1:00. At 0:05 she held her breath. Suddenly the air was filled with whooshing sounds and explosions; through the bright flashes of light she saw the long grass around her wave from the blast waves. She noticed the timer projected on her viewscreen had reset and was counting down the two-minute cannonade.
One minute in she began to flex her legs and uninjured arm, and faced a moment of panic when her limbs initially didn’t respond. With fifteen seconds to go she carefully rolled onto her stomach and began crawling in the direction the column had come from so many hours earlier. When the timer hit 00:00 she stumbled to her feet and began running, ignoring everything except the overpowering desire to get away.
Siengha smiled ruefully as she sat in the air transport en route to the outpost. She was one of thirteen humans to survive that first battle — all, like her, from the end of the column; survivors from the middle and front were cut down before making it back over the rise. As far as she knew, she was the only soldier from the ambush still suiting up for the fight. Some were mentally finished, done with war, after that first battle. Others, like Siengha, wanted to return to the battlefront as soon as possible for revenge or redemption. Over time most of the ones who wanted to go back were killed or wounded in action and moved into rear-echelon postings.
All except her.
She redeemed herself in her own eyes the next time she faced the Vyps, and in several more bloody battles after that. In the process she discovered an innate affinity for warfare that was comforting and confusing at the same time. After awhile she became known as ‘Siengha the Survivor’ and was considered almost a good luck charm by the officers and soldiers in her new platoon. But by the end of the war’s first year, as Command realized humanity wasn’t winning despite killing tens of thousands of the enemy, the nickname took on a darker meaning: she survived while those around her didn’t.
Going on two decades later, Platoon Sergeant Siengha realized very little had changed from that first ambush. Some of the weapons, sure — more so for the aliens — but the basic business of killing or being killed was the same. And they fought on the same planets, capturing and losing the same ground over and over. In sixteen years, neither side had advanced beyond a wide, arcing belt of systems dividing humanity from its alien enemy.
One thing that had changed was her role in the war. She became a leader, first of a fire team, then a squad, and eventually Siengha was promoted to platoon sergeant — Papa Sierra. At first she was uncomfortable with being responsible for the lives of others, but in time Sien
gha realized her knowledge and experience was the best hope they had for survival.
Siengha eyed the five replacements sitting around her in the transport, their unblemished armor and close-cropped hair a stark contrast to the worn equipment and shaggy manes of the rest of the platoon. Personally, as long as they fought well Siengha didn’t care how long their hair was.
She kept her own close cropped and had done so since that first battle on XO-5916c. After reaching the safety of the rally point, she had collapsed to the ground and two medical techs rolled her onto her back as her body succumbed to the hours of fear. Siengha started to violently tremble and then her stomach let go, unfortunately before she could unstrap and remove her helmet. The med techs washed the sick from her face but didn’t have water or the time to spend on her hair.
Days and several washings later, the odor of vomit was still in her nose as she lay in the ward of an orbiting hospital ship.
The transport banked into a course change. The eyes of her new soldiers again darted wildly around the cabin and tongues ran across unnaturally dry lips, sure tells to minds focused on dying, being maimed, or making a mistake that meant someone else would die or be maimed.
If they lived long enough, Siengha knew they would discover the more experienced soldiers surrounding them had learned to hide these same fears. But for now the newbies felt miserably alone, together. Their Papa Sierra knew this the same way she knew everything about the war.
Three Minutes Out
“Three minutes out.”
Ghazni grunted an acknowledgment as his eyes moved from the vid display to the datascreens surrounding it. He tensed and relaxed his fingers around the transport’s control yoke and then did the same with his toes, careful not to move the pedals beneath his feet.
Green Zulu Five One: And Other Stories From the Vyptellian War Page 2
