Reclaim: Books 1-3

by J. A. Scorch

  "You can't be serious? Six? They set us up. Those alien pricks dragged us into a trap."

  Porter couldn't disagree. The Zeal had used the cover of the storm to move up their defense systems and reinforce their hold on the city. With more than a third of their dwindling attack force gone, the joint UEF and MAF mission was about to go from bad to worse.

  The comm lit up with chatter as every pilot and co-pilot condemned what just happened. The squadron leader was still alive and flying. She spent the next minute getting every bird into a formation. Porter didn't envy the pilot. If she made it back to base, Miller would throw her in the brig out of anger alone.

  The squadron leader ordered the nine remaining Dragonettes to complete combat drops from 10,000 feet in a spread-out formation. The snap decision was going to give the troops on board a chance to survive, or it was going to guarantee they would die before they touched the ground.

  Seconds before Clay dropped the bird out of the sky like a dead weight, Porter got up from his seat and headed out of the cockpit.

  "Where are you going?" Clay shouted.

  "I need to check on something. I'll be back in a second." Porter closed the cockpit hatch that typically stayed in a fixed, open position before he moved along to a storage locker only the pilots had access to. He opened the unit and grabbed on tight to the nearest overhead handle as Clay dropped the Dragonette out of the sky for a vertical combat landing. The aircraft would be shooting out countermeasures to confuse the inbound missiles the Zeal would be firing on each bird across the city. Before the twin VTOL engines would be forced to fight gravity and bring the Dragonette to a controlled and fast landing, Porter would have put on the battle armor sitting in front of him.

  Multiple warnings blared throughout the cargo hold as Clay expertly handled the combat drop. Porter could feel the shift in gravity as the pilot brought the Dragonette around to quickly lower the rear ramp as the aircraft came to within a few meters of the ground the same way the pilot had managed before when he escaped the city with the SF soldiers.

  Porter didn't have time to clip up his armor and secure his gear when the green light flashed down in the cargo hold telling the UEF soldiers on board that it was time to jump down into hell.

  He ran after the last few grunts, holding his rifle and equipment loose before he dropped out of the ramp to the wet ground below. Porter half stumbled and quickly headed for the nearest section of cover he could find while the UEF began shooting at the dozens of Stiltz that had tracked their descent.

  For the next thirty seconds, Porter fumbled with his battle armor and helmet until it was secure and ready for the fight. He let out a long huff of air as he gripped the X762A1 rifle in his hands and waited for the UEF troops to move on without him.

  The hovering Dragonette quickly fired off and headed back for the sky as one missile after the other narrowly missed taking Clay out. The lieutenant would have assumed that Porter was still on board. He wouldn't find out until he was back at the base—if Clay survived that long.

  Porter checked the fight ahead to see the UEF already making decent ground into the city. It was a long way to the Zeal base, but Porter was going to find Teve if it killed him.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The assault took Teve by surprise. He wasn't expecting the UEF to hit the city anytime soon after the last disastrous mission, especially with the torrential rains still transforming Atlanta into a lake. The explosions from half a dozen Dragonettes hitting the ground shook him to his core and sent a sharp edge down his spine.

  "That can't be good," he said to himself.

  He and Mish had spent the last few hours trying to hunt down the two hybrids that she swore were lurking around. The noise in her head kept telling her they were nearby but deliberately keeping their distance. During the chase, the two soldiers had to avoid patrols of Stiltz and random drones buzzing around. Teve tried again and again to get her to stop, but she wouldn't listen. If the UEF charge didn't break her focus, the pair might have continued to run around until the middle of the next day.

  "Why are they hitting the city now? It's suicide," Mish said.

  Teve glanced at her for a moment, wondering if she was herself again. The bloodlust seemed to have faded from her voice enough to let her sanity back in.

  "Whatever the reason," Teve said, "they are going to need some help. I think we should head toward the nearest platoon and join the fight."

  Mish seemed to like the idea, enough for her to forget about the two hybrids. Teve didn't give her any time to change her mind as he grabbed her by the bicep with an encouraging grin.

  She ran off ahead of him with her rifle ready to dish out revenge. They each had only one magazine left. The occasional drone needed to be put down during the last few hours to keep their position unknown from any Stiltz in the area. There seemed to be more of the hovering spheres than normal in the city. It was like the Zeal knew the UEF was coming back for more.

  Teve tracked the nearest Dragonette as it climbed back up above the fold through heavy rain to avoid the barrage of Zeal missiles heading its way. The pilot managed to get the bird out of harm's way. There was no way any of the Dragonettes would be able to provide support with the weather clouding visibility and every sensor on board. The autocannons would end up hitting UEF grunts as much as they would hit the Zeal.

  The platoon of soldiers was only a short distance from their current location. Teve and Mish had managed to get to the outer section of the city. A few more hours would have put them in the safer parts of the outskirts on a path to the UEF base. But Teve couldn't abandon the troops. From the limited number of Dragonettes he saw making it through the pushed-up Zeal defenses, the UEF would need every bit of help they could get.

  Mish pulled ahead, forcing Teve to hurry. She didn't check for danger or traps of any kind. Her focus was restricted to getting into the fight.

  Wanting more than anything to slow her down, Teve had no option but to pick up the pace and throw caution to the blasting winds. He figured if he moved fast enough, any Stiltz in the area wouldn't be able to shoot him.

  Mish found the platoon and joined up with their ranks from behind. It was probably the safest choice. She wasted no time and began hitting one Stilt after the other with speed and efficiency. Most of the regulars never got to see an SF fighter up close in battle. The two soldier types were kept separate in the field. Her smooth attack left a few of the personnel shocked and distracted.

  "Keep shooting," Teve yelled out as he arrived. Being a Master Sergeant, he didn't hold rank over the lieutenant that would be running the platoon, but his words were less of an order and more designed to keep the soldiers focused.

  He ran up to the nearest support soldier and requested more ammunition for himself and Mish. He explained who they were in as little words as possible only to receive a confused look from the corporal. It wasn't until the soldier gazed into his purple eyes that she understood who she was speaking to.

  "Take as many as you guys need," she said with more enthusiasm than was necessary. Teve gladly accepted twelve magazines and took them across to Mish as she approached the support soldier, looking for more bullets to fire.

  "Got you six more to play with," Teve said as he handed over the rounds. Mish nodded at him to say thanks as she loaded up. She ran off again for the forward most cover point, ready to engage the Stiltz.

  Teve followed and backed her play. They spent the next twenty minutes taking out every Stilt and drone in the area, leaving the regulars impressed at the very least. The platoon didn't lose a single soldier. Three privates got clipped by iron bolts, but their battle armor stopped the alien rods enough to minimize the damage done.

  The platoon settled into a temporary position before heading out to the next zone on their list. Teve spoke to the lieutenant in charge. "Sorry to drop in on you like this, sir. Figured you could use the support."

  "Don't mention it, Sergeant," Lieutenant Hensley said. The man had a cut above his eye on
his forehead, and his battle armor had seen better days.

  "What's the plan, sir? Are you guys headed for the base?"

  "Supposed to be, but I don't think it's going too well. As you probably saw, we lost six fully-loaded birds on the way in."

  Teve held the bridge of his nose between his gloved fingers for a moment. "What were they thinking? This weather alone was enough to call off this kind of assault."

  "You're telling me. Our drop was so crazy that one of the pilots came running out of the cockpit like he was about to jump out the back with us. I've never seen them do that during a combat insertion. Then again, here we are in the middle of a storm trying to take out this Zeal base with only a third of our usual numbers."

  A thought hit Teve's mind. "What about the Special Forces soldiers?"

  Hensley shrugged. "Never saw them loaded up into the birds. No one said a word about it. We all knew better than to ask."

  "What the hell? This doesn't make sense."

  "Never does, Sergeant. I don't suppose you know why we're hitting the city again so soon?"

  Teve didn't have any answers for Command's reasoning. All he could tell the lieutenant was the grim discovery he and Mish found in the base.

  "Have you got a line to Command?" Teve asked.

  "Of course. What do you need?"

  Teve glanced over his shoulder to Mish, seeing her resting against a half wall with her rifle ready to kill. She had a distant stare that was stretching out further and further with time.

  He turned back to Hensley. "Get me General Miller on the line. I've got something important to report."

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Porter was beginning to rethink his plan as he ventured from one bit of cover to the next. The city was a labyrinth of chaos. His e-slate did what it could to direct him toward the Zeal base, but there were obstacles in the way that the outdated map could not anticipate.

  The endless rain didn't help his efforts either as he stumbled through deep puddles and skidded over slippery brickwork, barely avoiding breaking a leg or worse.

  As he rounded another corner made from a fallen concrete wall, he spotted a patrol of Stiltz searching the area. Either they'd heard him scuttling around the section, or the aliens were responding to the combat drop from twenty minutes before.

  With no choice but to back up, Porter inched his way down into an overflowing drain. He squeezed himself into the broken pipe and waited for the tall beasts to stomp past. Each one of the shiny Stiltz scanned and searched as they moved using the tech within their suits to seek out humans.

  Porter knew they were virtually blind, but their hearing was spot on along with their other senses the UEF and MAF failed to understand.

  The water reached over his knees as he tried to keep his sidearm dry in the cramped space. As the last Stilt faded into the rain, Porter ventured back out. He didn't want to engage a single alien unless necessary. All he wanted to do was find Teve and bring him home.

  The thought made his brother's face occupy his mind again. It wasn't like he was intentionally thinking about Teve, but every so often, his image flashed up the way it had when he was inside the two Cyclone carriers.

  He shook his head a little to refocus as he came out of the drain. Porter climbed back up and headed the way he intended to travel before the next group of Stiltz came along to slow his progress.

  Part of him thought about staying with the platoon of grunts, but deep down he knew they wouldn't have allowed him to do so. There was still a dividing line between the UEF and the MAF no matter the circumstances. A war with powerful aliens wasn't enough to bring the two worlds together.

  As Porter reached the end of a narrow lane, he spotted a decent lookout point up ahead in the form of an old church bell tower that had somehow stayed standing despite the war zone it existed in. He decided to utilize the height of the intact building before a stray missile took out the vantage point.

  He shoved his way in through a half broken front door previous soldiers or Stiltz had destroyed during a fight. The once solid, wooden entry made a thud as it slammed into the ground when the weight of his body toppled over the remains of the door.

  Inside, the morning light flooded in through gaping holes along with the heavy rain. The church would have been a few hundred years old based on its interior. Porter came from a religious household and had spent many hours in different churches. He had since given up believing in any form of higher power—especially since the Zeal had arrived.

  Porter moved cautiously through the central aisle of the building, sweeping his head left and right as he went. The pews had all been snapped in two if they existed at all. Along one of the main walls were pockmarks and iron bolts sticking out of the ancient brickwork where various battles had taken place. And at the base of the high altar, a scorch mark from an exploded grenade had done significant damage to the flooring.

  How the church was still standing was nothing short of a miracle. Porter didn't hang around to take a tour and headed for the bell tower stairs. He took the climb two steps at a time and twisted up and around the main shaft of the long rise to the belfry.

  When he arrived, he found one of the four columns holding up the lantern and spire above to be missing. A Zeal missile had punched the brickwork clean through, leaving a large enough hole to make the whole thing structurally weak.

  He trod lightly as he raised his rifle to use the scope. Porter swept the viewfinder around the city toward the Zeal base until he spotted the platoon he had decided not to follow. The group of soldiers was resting up around a pile of fallen Stiltz. A few of the senior ranks were discussing strategy or possibly trying to work out how they could survive this latest mess.

  It wasn't until he blinked a few times over that he realized one of the soldiers was his brother.

  "Teve?" he heard himself ask out loud. A huge smile ripped across his face. He hadn't seen him in person for over 1500 days and had only spoken to him via a few crappy vidlink sessions Command had afforded them both.

  "Bastard's still alive." He couldn't believe Teve managed to survive the previous assault and everything before that moment on Earth. The cities had all been reduced to scattered ruins but were still overflowing with heavily-armed aliens. It wasn't until that moment that Porter realized how much influence the nanites had on Teve's survival in battle, yet those same tiny creatures were slowly killing him from the inside out. That would be a difficult conversation to have, so he shoved the thought to the back of his mind for now.

  According to Porter's scope, Teve and the platoon were approximately half a klick away through the mess of streets and caved-in buildings. For years, they had been divided by millions of kilometers. Now, Teve was close enough for Porter to reach out and grab him.

  An explosion overhead caused him to drop down slightly. A loose Zeal missile detonated when it missed hitting one of the Dragonettes flying around the city. The vibration in the air sent a shiver down his spine as he realized he still needed to get to his brother.

  Placing a digital marker where the platoon was in relation to the church, he headed back down the steps, leaving one arm out toward the center of the tower to charge down to the ground as quickly as possible.

  He couldn't wait to see the look on Teve's face. Porter's entire trip had been made a surprise visit with the help of his commanding officer on the MBC Andromeda. Commodore Garcia and Captain Porter had been through some tough times together, and they didn't always see things in the same light, so much so that he had ended up in the brig on one occasion. That was one of the differences with the fight in space over the fight on the ground. In space, the pilots had time to argue between missions. In the field, the struggle never stopped.

  As Porter reached the bottom, he lifted his rifle up and charged for the main exit. He would need to head back out the way he came in and skim around the church to head toward the platoon. His e-slate continued to point him in the right direction as he shifted his focus from the arrow on the display to
the dull street drenched in rain beyond the fallen wooden door.

  Porter never saw the water trailing down the body of the drone as it extended out its attack probe and filled his body with enough electricity to drop him to the floor in one blast.

  His head hit the ground and landed with a thud against the thickness of the church door, sending a white flash into his eyes before he faded into unconsciousness.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Lieutenant Hensley handed over his e-slate to Teve once he had a direct line to Miller. The system synced up to his comm.

  "Miller Actual. This is Master Sergeant Porter."

  "Sergeant Porter. This is Miller Actual. Good to hear your voice, son. Where have you been?"

  Teve cleared his throat as he shuffled on the spot and checked over his shoulder. "Sir, we got cut off and lost comms inside the Zeal base."

  "Sorry to hear it. Do you have anything to report?"

  "I'll get to that, sir. I just need to know one thing first."

  "Go ahead," Miller said. Teve could hear the irritation coming through the comm channel.

  "Where are the Special Forces soldiers?"

  "That's classified, Sergeant. Now, do you have anything of use to report to me?"

  Teve closed his eyes for a moment as he remembered the bodies hanging from the circular wall of the alien fortress. "They're all dead, sir. The prisoners. Every last one of them was put to death by the Zeal. There was nothing we could do."

  A long moment of silence followed Teve's message to Miller. Either the general didn't catch his last statement, or he was currently yelling and shouting at the nearest person back at the base.

  "Do you have anything else to report?" Miller asked in a calm, flat voice.

  Teve almost lost his footing on the question. The general should have been blasting him and threatening to bump him down a rank by now. "No, sir. Mish and I will continue to support Hensley's platoon until the base is captured."